


Velvet Cabaret

by retroria



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Cheryl Blossom Needs a Hug, Eventual Smut, F/F, Minor Betty Cooper/Veronica Lodge, Past Rape/Non-con, Stripper fic, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, stripper Toni Topaz, the core four are peaches, trigger warning for verbal and light physical abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-05-27 23:02:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 65,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15035246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/retroria/pseuds/retroria
Summary: Cheryl Blossom has acquired two things in her young life that means more to her than anything else. The first, Blossom Industries, a company that the redhead had brought up from the dust all by herself. The second, her mother's strip joint that branched off the brothel she owned. A brothel she despised, but a strip club that never failed to make her feel better at the end of a hard day. The Velvet Cabaret.A place like that is the last place on earth Cheryl expects to find her world turned upside down, tilted on it's axis by a slender tan body that slithers it's way into her life under the name of Toni Topaz. A woman so shadowed by her night life and so different in the morning, it takes Cheryl on an enigmatic ride she had never bargained for.Or;Cheryl Blossom falls in love with the one stripper she wasn't supposed to. Toni Topaz gets in a mess of love, joy, and the reminder of a toxic past.





	1. The First Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't done multiple chapter works on this site before, and this is my first attempt, but I've got a pretty solid angst and fluff train mixed with s e r i o u s smut in tow for you all. 
> 
> So sit back, relax, and enjoy the Choni stripper story we have all been waiting for :)

**i.**

Cheryl had always been taught that the men in Penelope’s brothel were up for grabs at any point in time.

“ _Those men, Cheryl… they come from money that we need,”_ the woman who Cheryl was so unfortunate as to call her mother had hissed to her while sitting in the parlor chair. The parlor which washed away the dried grey roots of her hair and colored it a pretentious red color.

Perhaps that fit her perfectly well though, red with rage, filled to the brim with pseudo _everything_ , and an all around trademarked Blossom.

Cheryl had been sixteen then, already fed with lies by her family and teeming with formidable negativity. Control was her vice, loss of it was the bane of her existence.

So young, and already so corrupted. So young, and so broken.

She had managed though, to stay away from the hungry men for the next five years of her life after that. Cheryl Blossom was everything but a _whore,_ and damn her if she would sell out her body to the needy and less than attractive men that crowded the low lit streets of the _Velvet Cabaret._

Hell, Cheryl had even refrained from visiting the brothel all that much, choosing instead to stick to the strip club joint of the bordello instead.

Being inside a building that reeked so heavily of sex brought a sort of disgust to the forefront of her mind, she could never erase the fact that this was run by her _mother_ from her brain. Besides, she had made friends at the strip joint of the _Velvet Cabaret,_ friends that were more to her than just objects on the stage, shaking their assets for money.

Tonight, Cheryl was going to the club again. It was almost a weekly activity for her, stress relieving and freeing, as she got to watch her friends move around and express themselves on stage while never having to touch a single man.

Her cousin Betty usually accompanied her to these things, feeling only comfortable asking her considering they were family and Cheryl was the only one outside of Jughead who knew about the girl’s darker sexual desires.

Tonight, Cheryl had been reminded by her mother that there was a newly inducted stripper who would be making her debut dance. Usually Cheryl’s visits to the club were just for fun, but tonight her mother had assigned her with the task of assessing the work and earnings of a certain _Toni Topaz._ Her name had made Cheryl smile, there was something sultry and seductive about it.

“Are you excited to see the new girl?” Betty piped from the seat next to Cheryl.

“I’m certainly _intrigued,_ with a name like Toni Topaz… she’s ought to bring something to the table,” Cheryl replied, twirling a stand of red hair between her fingers and wondering what _exactly_ it would be that she would bring to the table.

Perhaps some new moves? Or… a crazy ability to drive everyone nuts with a seductive aura? There were girls in the joint that Cheryl would’ve slept with no doubt had it not been for the redhead’s unbreakable policy of not sleeping with the women who worked there.

They were not prostitutes or sex workers, they worked in the club and not the brothel for a reason and Cheryl respected that.

“I’m just excited to see Veronica,” Betty trailed off into her own thoughts and glanced out her window, heart eyes taking over and Cheryl resisted the urge to roll her own. The blonde haired girl had had a crush on the raven haired stripper for almost as long as Cheryl could remember, and yet she was still with Jughead and refused to make any moves on Veronica.

Despite the fact that Cheryl knew for a fact her long time best friend felt the same way, she refused to interfere, things would fall in place for them if it fate had it that way.

Their black shielded and sleek limo rolled up to the front curb of the _Velvet Cabaret,_ commanding both of the wealthy girls in the car’s attention. Cheryl could already here the frantic and vibing music that was spilling out the cracks of the neon lit door, behind which her best friend and new stripper lay.

“Well, let’s go,” Cheryl breathed, turning to Betty who also looked more than ready to hop out of the car.

“Let’s.”   


The entrance was dark, clouded almost, under the intoxicated feelings of those who were hanging around by the doorway. Cheryl had to force her way through those people, gently smiling up at the guards who knew her by name now, their black iron pressed suits giving them a bigger appearance, and they smiled back at her, albeit tight lipped, letting her in immediately.

“Miss Blossom, Miss Cooper,” they greeted.

“Men,” Cheryl and Betty voiced in unison, slipping past them and the long line of horny men who waited to get in patiently.

The place itself was gigantic, from each side of the room was a dripped reddish gold hue that plastered the walls and reflected onto the dance floor, making everything in there exude a kind of lust and sensuality that never failed to relax Cheryl’s shoulders. She often found herself wondering why her mother favored any other division of the _Velvet Cabaret_ over it’s strip club joint. Perhaps that was just a personal choice thing, her mother had always been quite the eccentric prostitute, just hid it quite well before her brother and father passed away.

There were small poles and stages designed to fit into each corner of the room, strategically placed under the lights which had come with the building when Penelope had thought of expanding her business to more than just the rising bordello.

“It never fails to amaze me how your mother pulls this much crowd in small old Riverdale and gets away without a scandal,” Betty whispered into Cheryl’s ear, mesmerized by the many people with their lavish tuxedos and the women, scantily clad in the most expensive underwear.

It was by no means Betty’s first visit, but she always seemed to be taken aback by the sight, considering she only accompanied Cheryl when she visited and Cheryl only visited on Friday nights, the most hectic night at the club.

“My mother might be a bitch but she’s a bitch with an exquisite taste,” Cheryl grinned, sending the flash of a smile to Betty who smiled in tandem. The Penelope jabs never got old.

“That’s where you get it from,” Betty appeased, and both girls entered the darker, more shrouded part of the club where the center stage were with a shit eating grin on their faces.

A thumping bass song came on, enveloping both the girls in the environment of the club, easing them of the worries they had carried into the building on their shoulders like boulders; weighing them down.

“This is where _Toni Topaz_ is going to be performing, correct?” Betty asked, turning to the bar and waving to a raven haired boy who was wearing a tight fitting bartender clothing, a suit and tie that accentuated all his muscles. Cheryl had gone to school with him, but as it turned out, Reggie Mantle didn’t have too much in him to go any further than working as bartender in Riverdale.

Although, Cheryl didn’t believe that he was doing poorly, she herself was well aware of how heftly paid all the workers in the brothel, strip club, and underground drug dealing lair were. Almost as well paid as Cheryl’s own workers were at Blossom Industries.

_Almost._

She still topped their pays by about fifty grand. And _that,_ in her book, was a win against her mother.

“Earth to Cheryl?”

“Hm?” Cheryl hummed, turning to look at Betty as she leaned back against the bar behind her. The blonde girl raised a cautious eyebrow, sipping gently on whatever concoction she had gotten handed by Reggie.

“I asked if this is where Toni’s dancing tonight.”

“Yeah, yes, this is where mother told me she would be, now I wouldn’t put it past that raging pathological liar to tell me those lies just to _assure_ that I would be here tonight for some other show she’s ready to put on,” Cheryl commented, rolling her eyes at the audacity of her mother.

It had happened one time, Penelope had requested that Cheryl come over to judge a new stripper, and yet Cheryl had come face to face with a public show of her mother stripping for everyone and then proceeding to give a public _handjob._

Needless to say, it had scarred Cheryl plenty and she refused to come back to the vicinity for a good few weeks in succession to that mess.

“She’s a spiteful old bitch, I agree,” Betty nodded her head, turning to look at the main stage as lights around the place started shutting off one by one, the sexier strobes taking over. “But I don’t think she’s lying about this one.”

The music became central, and it was all anyone could hear, the lights above the poles in the other sides of the building shut off as the bigger spotlight centered over the one woman stepping out that Cheryl could only believe was Toni Topaz.

Almost immediately, all eyes were on her, there was no doubt about the fact that the woman knew who she was, knew her place, knew that she was _above_ the rest of the horny men and some women in this strip joint. It was quite alluring, the way Cheryl could tell even from the back of the room, how dominant Toni was. Each click of her heel, falling against the glass topped stage, her hips swinging in time with the music. She pulled a kind of long dormant desire from Cheryl, rising from the pits of the girl’s stomach to her chest and blossoming in her rib cage.

“Betty,” Cheryl leaned in and whispered into her cousin’s ear. “I’m going up closer to… assess her for my mother.”

Cheryl had meant to sound convincing, but the doubtful smirk that was plastered across Betty’s lips as she watched Cheryl go told the girl that she knew otherwise.

The redhead slunk through the crowd, diving between the people with the skill of a former sleuth, and made her way to the front of the room where she could see Toni leaning over the edge of the stage, making the man she was hovering in front of _tremble._ Cheryl didn’t blame him, she was trembling from all the way over here and Toni hadn’t even noticed her. Yet.

The redhead was determined to at least get the number of her mother’s newest dancer tonight, if not something more. No, by that she didn’t mean sex, she did want to get to know her though, perhaps a friendship? It wouldn’t be the first time Cheryl found an attractive member of her mother’s crew and befriended them.

Exhibit A: Veronica Lodge.

But the raven haired girl was far from Cheryl’s mind as the redhead gazed upon Toni, a woman with so much sexual prowess and power held in her body that Cheryl wondered why she looked for work in a rundown town like Riverdale. She could for sure be making equally as big bucks in somewhere like central New York city, alive with nightlife that one could only imagine of in Riverdale.

Cheryl’s intrigued and slightly predatory, but only as far as consensual predation of course, gaze landed upon Toni as she threw her long hair from one side to other, striding from one side of the stage to the other, shaking her hips. And _god have mercy_ on Cheryl, the usually ridgid backed girl found herself nearly melting at the feet of this goddess, of this woman who commanded so much from her with doing so little. The beat of the music picked up, becoming more frenetic, and Toni dropped onto the chair in front of her, legs spread on either side, showing off what were probably lusciously caramel thighs under normal lighting. Sip after sip of whiskey drained down Cheryl’s throat, though she wasn’t sure where she had pulled it from, but it was in her hand now so she would drink it, and her esophagus burned almost as bad as her loins.

And then… _then_ Miss Toni Topaz turned her attention to Cheryl, their eyes locking for a split second, sending what _must have been_ electricity up the youngest Blossom’s veins. She would be death of Cheryl, she was sure of that, Toni seemed to latch onto their eye contact, not losing it for a second, as the dip in her hips and the swing of her legs became more pronounced, like she was trying to prove a point.

Cheryl gripped the glass harshly in her hand, anger boiling in her body all of a sudden. Who was this dancer to instigate her like so? Who was Toni Topaz to try and bring a _Blossom_ to her knees?

But she could also not ignore the truth.

She _wanted_ Toni, in a way that she hadn’t ever felt a need for a partner before, not even when she had been dating a certain _Heather,_ a woman her mother had conveniently snatched from under Cheryl, hissing at her daughter for being the devil incarnate.

Little did Penelope know that it would only fuel Cheryl’s desires, the redhead going on a fucking rampage, literally and figuratively, bringing home girl after girl, and forcing her mother to sit through each and every pleasured moan and tortured sigh.

That had been back when Cheryl was more adventurous though, more willing to go out of her way to spite her mother. Back before she had become practically celebate for the sake of focusing on her company and out doing Penelope in another way.

Penelope would burn Cheryl at the stake for sleeping with a dancer.

_Perfect._

Cheryl grew even more eager at that prospect, barely being able to control herself from jumping out of her place on the floor and dragging this _Toni_ with her to a backroom. To hell with her policy of not sleeping with the strippers, if Toni was willing, then so was Cheryl.

Cheryl’s attention returned to Toni as the song began to slow, signaling the end, and Cheryl thanked the lord for the red lighting above head that shielded anyone else from seeing the intense blush that covered her cheeks when she realized Toni was still staring at her.

The girl’s face was indecipherable from this far, with the marring of the red lights, the screaming of the people ahead to wanted her body, the haziness of the whisky, it played tricks on Cheryl’s eyes, but she could see without a shadow of a doubt that the girl was _fit._

But then, the song came to an end, and before Cheryl could raise her voice or move through the crowd, Toni disappeared off the stage and into the backroom. Cheryl was more than aware of the layout of the backrooms, she had been here since the beginning of the bordello and joint after all, but she hesitated in that moment. Perhaps this was some higher power telling her to reign it in and calm down. This was a girl that Cheryl barely knew, a girl Cheryl only knew as far as the details her mother had given her, which wasn’t much at all outside of her name.

So she took the hint and moved away, heart dropping surprisingly in her chest, and made her way back to Betty, only to find the blonde engaged in a conversation with Veronica Lodge.

“Ronnie!” Cheryl exclaimed, placing her whisky glass on a caterer’s pan before moving to engulf the raven haired girl in a tight hug. “I missed you today, your dance, I’m sorry. Work held me late.”

“Don’t worry about it, Cherry, really,” Veronica grinned. “I caught Betty sulking back here because apparently you abandoned her to go, and I quote, _fuck Toni’s brains out?”_

Cheryl rolled her eyes.

“An exaggeration of hyperbolic mutitudes,” Cheryl cleared up. “I saw her on stage, and I must admit, she is _very_ good at what she does. But you know my policy Vero, no matter how good looking one is, I must refrain from falling into bed with them. I know no one would find out, but I also can’t risk someone even getting an inkling and leaking it to the pap that I slept with someone from my mother’s strip club. It’s been hard enough getting positive publicity in the articles with the stigmas everyone has over my last name and my mother’s _business.”_

Veronica pouted and rubbed up and down Cheryl’s arm, comforting the girl while Betty reached over and squeezed her hand.

“You don’t need to explain it to me, Cheryl, I get how hard it is to leave the wing of an overbearing omnipresent parent. There’s a reason why despite my best efforts… I still ended up here at a strip club, shaking my ass for money that gets me through college rather than using the million dollar fund that my daddy had set up for me.”

Cheryl frowned. “I love our little dysfunctional families club, you too Betty, we all know how messed up your dad is in the brain. I mean, he tried to sleep with my mother after all.”

Betty choked out a laugh. “Very funny, Cheryl, but that almost broke my mom.”

And as the night grew on, Cheryl found herself enjoying the drinks and banter with her friends, but also found that the memory of Toni, and her _capable_ hips took up the back of her mind. She yearned, every few moments, to go back and search for the woman who had made her feel things that no other had in a long while, and simply from the way she had moved.

But she didn’t, she needed to control herself. For if she couldn’t control herself, then how would she ever control those around her?

**ii.**

The next morning, Cheryl was more than happy and pleased to feel the control seeping back into her bones. Thank god for a good night of sleep and _somehow_ no hangover, and the remnants of whatever lust was still ebbing within Cheryl… _well…_ she would just have to take care of that the good old way. 

Her hand slipped beneath the comforter, she found that her orgasms were all ways most solid when it was barely morning, her body still waking up, overwhelmed with pleasure that her own fingers were giving her. She rocked into herself over and over again, imagining thick thighs, those of a certain _Toni Topaz,_ a luscious body that could move in ways over her own body.

Cheryl shook with a power of a thousand hurricanes, climaxing hard around her fingers and wishing it was the mysterious girl wrapped around her instead. She wanted to feel her, know her, see what was further inside, Cheryl Blossom was _intrigued._

But that would have to wait for later. Work always came first in her mind, especially after it had been her father’s business that had tanked her last name, she worked hard on rebuilding the credibility behind her patronymic.

She ran through the usuals with a casual ease that came with the knowledge of having done the same routine for years now. There was something pleasing to Cheryl, knowing that she could be done with all of her morning rituals at the same time everyday, the ticking of the clock accompanying her every move like the beat to a muscle memorized dance, the same _click_ of the hand falling upon the nine as Cheryl slotted her coffee into place.

It was control, it was the familiar, it was everything that Cheryl had aspired for her life to be since she was little. Since her father had chosen the easy way out and her brother had been forced away from her to an afterlife that was more rosey than his actual life.

By the time Cheryl stepped into the tall building with the towering Blossom insignia shining even in the daylight, she was at ease. Her shoulders were tense with the knowledge of a tough day of negotiating with bigoted bastards ahead, but her mind relaxed at the thought of something she had already been through. She fought these same battles every day, she would do fine today.

For the exception of one thing, and one thing only: her new secretary.

Cheryl’s last secretary, a certain Josie McCoy, had been fired on counts of perjury during her mother’s court case against yet another thing that was destined to be doomed from the beginning.

But Cheryl refused to have a single bad name in her company, she held all of her employees to the same pristine standards, and she most definitely would not have her _secretary_ of all people, being accused of things that could very possibly tank her precariously built company.

Of course, firing someone so important to her position also meant Cheryl would have to go through the strenuous and extensive process of picking another secretary. She had seen most of them yesterday, today were the last three, and she surely was expecting something better than what she had to listen to yesterday.

The state of her next secretary position was looking… bleak, to put it gently.

It was no matter though, Cheryl was sure she would find someone, even if they were subpar she would _train_ them. She hadn’t successfully been captain of the River Vixens for three years and taken them to the finals all three years for nothing.

“Kevin,” Cheryl called, addressing the lobbyist who sat at the main desk. The man whom Cheryl had known since high school, a boy who had shown enough promise to go work elsewhere but choosing against moving too far from his safe parameters. “How’s the roster looking?”

“Heavy,” Kevin responded, flipping through his pages before pausing on one and peering up at Cheryl. “You have three more interviews for the secretary job today, correct?”

Cheryl nodded, checking her nails before returning her gaze to the boy.

“Well, it just so happens that the woman who was scheduled last… had some time constraints and showed up extra early… she’s in your office right now,” Kevin grimaced, pointing to the doors a few stairs up, behind which someone was in Cheryl’s private office… by themselves.

“ _Kevin,”_ Cheryl hissed, shaking her head and turning in the direction of the elevators that she rarely used in order to get the calf workout by walking up the stairs everyday. “You _know_ no one’s allowed in there alone! You’re actions are near imbecilic at this point, I must say,” Cheryl reprimanded, getting lost behind the sliding metal doors of the moving contraption that rapidly brought her closer to where her next interviewee was.

Moving as fast as she could, Cheryl darted through the hallway and brought herself to her room, taking a moment to gulp and straighten out her back.

First impressions were everything, a lesson well taught by Penelope and baroquely learned by Cheryl, and no matter how panicked Cheryl was in the moment, she would never forget her most basic knowledge.

She pushed open the glossed glass doors of her office, which were tinted black in a way that she couldn’t see inside from the exterior but she could see everything on the outside from the interior.

Cheryl’s eyes fell immediately upon the lithe and petite body sitting in the chair facing her desk, polite and gentle, hair falling upon her back in pink waves which were certainly unconventional for a woman in the business.

The woman in the chair’s head turned first, to the side, giving Cheryl a glimpse of her godly side profile. A smile stretched onto the side of her face that the youngest Blossom could see, and there was something almost _familiar_ about the girl-

“Hi! I’m sorry to come so early, I had something come up and I just _had_ to reschedule,” the girl moved up out of her chair, speaking fast but curtly. Impressively. “My name is-”

She turned around.

And the redhead’s own knees seemed to weaken.

The girl in front of her made eye contact with her, smile dropping and outstretched hand slacking. A panicked expression took over the pink haired woman’s face and Cheryl’s body trembled.

Those were the eyes she had seen last night, the eyes she had lusted after in the morning, the eyes she had imagined looking into as she shook to a climax this very morning in her bed.

Cheryl opened her mouth to finish the sentence her interviewee had began, only to whisper it in a forbidden way, slipping past her mouth at the same time that the cavorting stripper in the quiet of the night spoke it more dominantly.

“ _Toni Topaz.”_

 


	2. The Secretary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a relatively shorter chapter, but it sets the foundation for a lot of angst (but also fluff) to come in then next few chapters. Enjoy!

  
**i.**

Toni Topaz was a woman of many enigmatic paradoxes, she liked to believe. She put herself on quite the high pedestal, never letting her confidence drop below a certain point. She had the moves, she was intelligent, she worked hard to keep her body in shape. 

So then  _ why,  _ had this red headed woman from last night made her knees so weak that she had even begun to doubt her own abilities upon that stage last night? 

She remembered the way the power had felt in her hands, spreading her legs, running her hands over them, begging with her eyes for the woman in the crowd to step up and find her after the show. It turned Toni on beyond belief, how easily the woman in the crowd seemed to submit to her, despite the controlling aura emitting from her stance, the tightly gripped glass of whiskey in her hands, and the bottom lip that was being battered between her pearly whites. 

**ii.**

_ “You have any idea who the redhead woman in the crowd was?” Toni asked Veronica after the club had emptied out and everyone was packing up and putting their equipment away. The mood in the club was more mellow now, the remaining drunks staggering around the place, collecting money that had fallen from g-strings to the floor.  _

_ “Why? You like her?” Veronica teased with a grin, smiling at the newest member of the strip club.  _

_ Toni blushed and looked away, like hell was she going to diverge her attractions to a woman she barely knew. Though she had to admit Veronica had been more than helpful in giving Toni hand for settling in, but that didn’t mean the pink haired Southsider was going to become an open book for her.  _

_ “I just asked if you know her, Lodge.” _

_ “I do…  _ Topaz,  _ but since you’re unwilling to tell me your secrets, I’ll keep some of my own,” Toni watched slightly disgruntled but amused as Veronica slung a bag full of her costumes and money over her shoulder. “You’re just going to have to find out her name yourself, I suppose. She comes every Friday, keep an eye out. That’s all I’m giving you.”  _

_ “You’re a bitch,” Toni commented crassly, grinning nonetheless.  _

_ “Yes, but I’m a bitch that’s besties with the redhead in the crowd you want, so watch it,” Veronica threw back before disappearing out the door of the club, not to be seen again until she came back for her next dance.  _

**iii.**

There was silence, in the room, nothing but the daunting essence of  _ too much  _ knowledge.

It was no doubt that Cheryl was probably teeming with discomfort as Toni watched the redhead’s usually composed self dismantle. She knew there was almost no hope for this interview now, and yet Toni’s entire faith had been riding on it when she woke up this morning. 

Her sordid dance of last night would definitely get in the way of whatever could’ve been, Toni was almost sure of that. Who would want a stripper as their secretary? That too, a secretary of one of the biggest up and coming empires in the entirety of New York, even branching to states around them. 

“Well,” Cheryl breathed, her eyes traveling over the length of Toni’s body, and for the first time the pink haired girl felt her confidence drop to her toes. “Take a seat, Toni.” 

Toni’s eyes widened and watched as the redhead swirled around her, dropping into the cushioned seat across from her, separated by a glass desk lined from edge to edge with pens, pencils, little trinkets that probably meant something to Cheryl, and a fat stack of papers in the middle. 

“Wha- are you serious?” 

Cheryl furrowed her brows and cocked her head to the side. “Why wouldn’t I be? I surely don’t make a habit of saying things I don’t mean.” 

“Well I don’t mean to come off as… having an apoplexy, but you saw me last-” 

“If you want to work with me, Toni,” Cheryl interrupted, breathing in harshly, eyes darting down to her hands, a not so clandestine blush crossing her cheeks despite her apropos manner. “The first thing you should know, is I do not spend time, dwelling on the… ephemeral moments in life. I refuse to give precious time on the things that are brief, on the things that might as well be as unimportant as spending your life finding an elixir to life.”

“I don’t think I would call what happened last night  _ ephemeral  _ by any stretch of the word,” Toni squinted, leaning away from Cheryl, stepping closer to the door rather than away from it. “Besides, I really think I should get going… I don’t… um, with all due respect, Miss Blossom-” 

“Please, it’s Cheryl,” the redhead interrupted, waving away the formalities.

“Of course,” Toni teetered on the edge of feeling slightly uncomfortable and being confused by her intricate hospitality. “I just don’t think it would be the wisest idea for me to work here considering what you already know of me.” 

Cheryl cocked her head to the side and bobbed gently back and forth in her chair.

“Why so, Toni?” 

The pink haired woman had to halt a moment and let the shiver that ran up her spine curdle in her stomach at the sound of her name coming out in such a _desirable_ manner from Cheryl’s mouth. She had been imagining how her name would possibly sound on the redhead’s lips all night, wondering what her voice would sound like. And now that she knew, it was beyond anything she couldn’t imagined.   


The high airy tones accompanied by a rougher more scratchy voice, it caused something to stir in Toni’s stomach. 

“Because,” Toni sighed. “I don’t let anyone know me that well. Much less the woman I would be working for. I have other places that I applied to, and if all else fails… the strip club always pays well.” 

An almost guilty look crossed Cheryl’s face as she sighed and dropped her head into her hands. 

“I feel awful that you won’t take up my offer simply because…” 

“It’s not all that bad, Cheryl, really,” Toni appeased, moving closer to the redhead and trying to ease whatever tensions she could. She truly hadn’t meant to upset the woman, after all, Toni wasn’t oblivious to the fact that Cheryl was of course part of the Blossom hierarchy descended from the one and only Penelope Blossom. Her employer at the  _ Velvet Cabaret.  _ “Should I be offended that you consider me doomed despite having said that I have other job applications sent out?” 

Cheryl gave a watery laugh. 

“God, Toni, no, I didn’t mean for it to come off like that,” Cheryl sat up straighter, sighing. “It’s just that…  _ stripping  _ aside, if you and I had started off on the right foot then perhaps you would’ve been my new secretary tomorrow. It’s unfair, I feel like I cheated you of something.” 

“Well, if you feel that bad…” Toni pondered, tapering off at the end, catching Cheryl’s attention successfully. “I know a way you could make it up to me.” 

Cheryl swiveled in her chair and faced Toni fully. Even from afar the pink haired Serpent could see the amusement dancing in her dark eyes. “I’m all ears, Topaz.” 

“Are we on a last name basis now?”

“Seeing as how I’ve already seen you practically naked? I’d say yes.” 

“Ah, about that,” Toni swooped forward, gathering her confidence back, one word at a time. “I believe we’re… uneven in that playing field. You said you felt like you cheated me out of something right? Well I don’t want this job, I have others in line. I want you to come to my show next Friday. It’s at midnight, very opportune timing considering there’s almost the most buzz during then. No one will see you coming or going.” 

Cheryl’s mouth dropped open, swallowing visibly. 

“I won’t dance for you, if that’s what you’re suggesting-” 

“It’s  _ my  _ show, Blossom, why would you ever think that?” 

Cheryl shrugged, finally gathering her bearings once more. Toni chose to ignore the way it almost seemed like comfort gripping the redhead’s shoulders once more at the feeling of being back in her comfort zone. 

“I don’t know, I’ve heard it gets wild down there, from my one and only mother.” 

Toni smiled, teeth showing and all. 

“She’s something else.” 

“You’re telling me,” Cheryl laughed indulgently and let herself fall a little further back into the cushioning of her comfortable leather chair. “You should’ve seen her back in her prime days, one time she made me sit there and watch her give some man a handjob because I’d dare to defy her and her arguments that morning.” 

Toni’s eyebrows shot up suddenly and a rather ghastly expression crossed her face as her insides recoiled at that. 

“She’s  _ not  _ something else then, she’s just a nightmare, huh?”

Cheryl grinned.

“I’d toast to that.” 

“Hm, unfortunately we have no bubbly for such a move,” Toni faux pouted. “But if you would let me take you out on a date tonight… perhaps I could change that.” 

Toni had always been an outgoing person, never one to cower away from feelings, and she was more than thankful for that in this moment as a thinly veiled sanguine color spread across Cheryl’s cheeks. It rouged in her such a beautiful manner… a way that only made Toni’s insides stir with further desire. 

“So you bargain  _ two  _ occasions with me, conning me out of my guilt?” Cheryl whispered, her voice almost threatening to give out. 

Toni found that  _ fucking  _ adorable. 

“Now now,” Toni shrugged, leaning over to grab her purse and gently easing it onto her shoulder. “I don’t think it’s conning you into anything if I give you free choice. So, I’ll be waiting tonight at eight, at Pops. Show up if you want, and if you don’t… I’ll take it that I won’t be seeing you at the club on Friday either,” Toni paised, hovering near the door, both of their hungry eyes feasting off each other. Tension tying solid knots in the room. “Not for me, anyways.” 

And with that, Toni exited the room, door shutting languidly behind her, leaving a trail of smoke and effervescence in her wake. She would be the storm Cheryl Blossom had never faced. 

**iv.**

The sun setting in the Southside was always a beautiful. It never failed to give Toni the kind of relaxing view that she needed, especially before a meeting of such nerve wracking multitudes. 

She remained on top of her trailer, sticking her head out of the fire escape, glancing upwards at the sky which tinted a bubblegum pink, almost like her hair. The trees painted soft bumps in the distance, through which she could ever so faintly hear the sempiternal crashing of Sweetwater River tides lapping against the shore. 

The grandeur of the area around her was pallid, to be frank, but despite all that Toni had seen in the world, the places she had been to pursuit careers that would probably never be hers, her soft spot remained for the land here which was a shout away from the opulence of wealth she had seen.

This land was ophidian, for the snakes, built by the snakes, and housed the Serpents.

Even in Toni’s claustrophobic little trailer, she found the beauty in it. Perhaps a certain Cheryl Blossom would find anything and everything to criticize, from the linoleum floors that squeaked with every step to the barely shuttered windows which were only covered by the peeling paint of the wall above it, hanging down over the window like a curtain.

It was filthy and a quintessence of squalor, but it was Toni’s home. 

Toni slipped out of the escape with a sigh, back down into the trailer, her steps light as to keep from waking her drunk uncle who lounged around in the back. 

It had been many nights since she had opened her front door and found the man passed out, using it as a form of payment from Toni for being her  _ legal guardian  _ for eight years of her life. 

His alcohol abuse was  _ atrocious  _ at best, and Toni often wondered if she should move out of her place once and for all, even if it was just to keep her sleazy uncle away.

But she didn’t.

Sunnyside had been her home for as long as she could remember, even though she could probably afford a small condo on the outskirts of Riverdale now, Toni saved the money.

She could make do with the tin of a home she’d lived in for almost her whole life now. 

Even if that meant letting her negligent uncle in every once in a while because he was too drunk to make it from the bar back to his house, Toni’s little trailer being a perfect pit stop right in the middle. 

She shoved those thoughts away from her mind, making sure that she had hid all of her lingerie in their allocated locations so her uncle wouldn’t  _ happen  _ to stumble across them. Even in his drunken state Toni didn’t want him raising any questions about what she did. 

It wasn’t like he had a hold over her life anymore, she had become her own person three years ago when she turned eighteen, but it still was a safety measure she took.

A man like him, she could never be sure of where his big mouth would put information where it wasn’t needed.

She did one quick once over of the place, noticing that the clock was rapidly reaching eight p.m. and she would have to be at Pops very soon. Toni cautiously tiptoed through the house, making sure to step away from the linoleum tiles on the kitchen floor that made noises when pressed and grabbing her coat from the chair over which it had been hung when she entered the trailer. 

Once she was out, Toni could breathe a sigh of relief, letting the crunching of newly fallen autumn leaves under her feet and the sickly green colored weeds wrapping around the soles of her shoe comfort her.

It wasn’t a long walk from Sunnyside to Pops considering the diner was placed conveniently enough so that it lay right on the divide of the North and the South side. Often reveling in it’s abilities of becoming a hub for both parties; but Toni still wished that she had her motorcycle to ride. A vehicle she could no longer keep around her trailer considering the sudden paroxysm of crime that had spiked in the area. 

Toni did find herself being thankful that she had started out for the diner as early as she did because when she arrived, she could see a cherry red convertible in which a certain redhead was sitting, her posture rigid and her expression far from tranquil. 

  
She looked about as nervous as Toni felt, maybe even more. 

Toni cocked her head to the side, wondering what it was that could  _ possibly  _ be bothering Cheryl? Might it be the idea that she was going out on a date with a  _ stripper?  _ That would certainly do a number on Toni’s self confidence if that was the case.

It wasn’t her choice to go in that line of profession…

If she could’ve chosen… 

But those were ponderings for another time, certainly not before the curious twilight zone reflection time of midnight. 

For now, Toni walked confidently up to Cheryl’s car and knocked gently on the window as to not scare the woman who looked like a cautious deer crossing the road, wearily watching as to not get caught in headlights. 

The window rolled down with the silence of a mechanism that was oiled on the daily, it was only natural of course, coming from the money that Cheryl probably possessed. Toni could only imagine what kind of life that amount of money held. 

“Hiding from me already, princess?” Toni asked, resting her forearm against the top of the car door and leaning in through the open window. “And to think, I haven’t even brought the rope out yet.” 

Cheryl’s eyes widened as a nervous but amused chuckle fell past her lips, Toni gave herself an invisible pat on the back for successfully breaking the ice without drowning.

“Just waiting for you, actually,  _ ma chérie,”  _ Cheryl shrugged, and Toni could almost pinpoint the moment where she watched the girl she was taking on a date slip into her natural mask. 

“Are you sure?” Toni lowered her voice. “We don’t have to do this today if you don’t want to.” 

“No-” Cheryl shook her head, reaching out and grabbing the weathered collar of Toni’s Serpents jacket that she had thrown carelessly over her rather meticulously chosen outfit. “No, I want to do this, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be… like this, I just have a lot on my mind.”

Toni’s lips twisted down into a frown, that surprisingly was as genuine as the girl had ever been. She wasn’t expecting to be sympathetic towards this rich girl that Toni could bet had never seen a day of hard work in her life outside of her current job. 

“Of course,” Toni nodded, reaching up and encompassing Cheryl’s frightfully cold claw in her own warm palm. “We can talk about it inside. Only if you want to of course.”

Cheryl said no more, her eyebrows scrunching together in an adorably confused expression and Toni fought the urge to kiss the crease on her forehead. 

She had expected a fuck or two out of Cheryl, maybe even a good few dates, but the way her heart seemed to clench in her chest at the sight of the woman, the way any ulterior motive she could ever have  _ percolated _ out of the perforation created by Cheryl’s own  _ softness...  _ it scared Toni Topaz.

Now, she was no neophyte to the feeling of  _ love,  _ having been in it once in her life with a girl a long time ago, but…  _ soft?  _ For another? Toni had never been such a thing.

Not even when she had believed herself to be in the grasp of another, her heart beating in time with the girl’s. 

By the time the two girls had been seated, Toni had taken her time to fully notice everything about Cheryl, and she also took careful note of how often she clenched and unclenched her hands, her jaws, crossing and uncrossing her legs. 

“I hate to say it, Bombshell, but you’re a nervous  _ wreck,”  _ Toni teased, taking a languid sip of her strawberry milkshake whilst sitting opposite from her date. 

Cheryl rolled her eyes. 

“Oh  _ please,  _ as if I haven’t seen you looking anywhere but directly at my eyes for this whole time. Unless… you can’t keep your eyes off of me because I’m just  _ that  _ delectable?” 

“It’s the latter, Red, trust me. Besides, that’s just more points to my house considering that means you took your time putting your look together just for  _ me,”  _ Toni grinned in that impish manner she had only associated with her old friend Jughead. 

“Your attempts at self flattery are marsecent at best, love,” Cheryl toasted, tipping her drink just gently in the direction of Toni before taking a healthy gulp. “But, considering we  _ are  _ on a date that I have to slave through-”

“ _ Hey!”  _

“- tell me a little about yourself… Antoinette Topaz,” Cheryl finished. 

Toni’s eyebrows contorted into what could only be deciphered as a surprised and curious look. 

“Did you really go looking in my records for my whole name?”

_ She really is something else.  _

“Perhaps.”

_ Controlled by solely her emotions, a perfect creation of nature.  _

‘“That’s gotta be illegal, right? I mean Cheryl… my  _ personal  _ records?” 

Cheryl shrugged, her fingers grasping the straw tightly and swirling it in circles around her glass. 

“Everything is legal so long as you don’t get caught, Topaz,” she winked.  **_Divine._ ** “But no, it was not illegal, I simply read over the form you submitted to apply for my secretary position. Which was… delightful, by the way.” 

“Glad to know you think so,” Toni spoke carefully around the fries in her mouth, hand covering her mouth. “I actually put a surprising amount of effort into that, so much so that I only changed a few sentences so they pertained to and focused on different aspects for the different job titles and sent it as a mass thing to all the places I applied to.” 

Cheryl winced. 

_ A woman who  _ **_feels,_ ** _ a woman who knows nothing but the power of emotion.  _

“I am… deeply apologetic for… I don’t know,” Cheryl flailed, because in actuality there was  _ nothing  _ wrong that she had done. Toni had turned down her offer to continue with the interview. 

“You’re good, Cheryl,” Toni assured, reaching over and scooping her upturned and outstretched palm under Cheryl’s tightly clasped fist. “It was my choice. I wouldn’t want to be working in a place where it’s very likely that someone could learn about my indiscretions because well… someone already knows.” 

“I would never do that.” 

“I don’t know that.

Cheryl’s eyebrow quirked in a manner that Toni couldn’t help but find extremely attractive but also devastatingly cocky. 

_ A woman who could  _ **_tame_ ** _ you.  _

“Well we should work on that, shouldn’t we?” Cheryl questioned, her mien changing up just  _ slightly,  _ and Toni could feel it like a warm lambent over her head. It wasn’t necessarily a  _ soft  _ aura that was coming off of Cheryl but it promised  _ more,  _ it spoke of a future relationship that would seek to lacerate any semblance of normality in her life. 

“You tell me,” Toni sunk into the back of her cool booth, the contrast of the temperature against her fumarolic back. “Should we?”

“I think I have just the place where you and I can do some… trust building exercises,” Cheryl smirked, putting her milkshake down and signaling with her hand the outside world. 

“Oh yeah? And how many girls have you used  _ that _ line on?” 

“Only one,” Cheryl spoke cheekily. Toni couldn’t help but mirror the expression herself, this was the complete opposite of what she had been expecting today’s date to be like. To be fair she wasn’t really sure how much of a  _ date  _ she could get out of the owner of Blossom Industries who also frequented her mother’s strip joint on Fridays. 

Toni pretended to think for a moment, while out of the corner of her eye, she really watched the redhead who had the most serene of expressions on her face. Halcyonic, even. The pink haired Serpent was taken by the soft locks that fell in flowing waves over her shoulders. 

Her hair was not red, or orange, or  _ ginger,  _ as Toni was sure some ignorant fool had probably conjured up the audacity to describe it as. Her hair was a fluttering  _ ponceau,  _ a word that Toni had learned while she had been in college. A word to describe a mighty red that often blended into orange, a word that could  _ only  _ be used to describe the hair of the gorgeous woman in front of her. 

There was simply no other use for it, it had been created solely for Cheryl, Toni was sure of it. 

“Okay,” Toni acquiesced, dropping her act and scooting out of the booth. “Wow me Blossom.” 

An idyllic smile grew across the paper white girl’s face, as if she already knew she had won this game. And perhaps she had, Toni had never known herself to be this outgoing on a first date despite her reputation of being quite the player. 

“I never do anything but.” 

And so Cheryl slithered out of the booth, joining Toni at the door of the diner, both of them waving a farewell to the chocolate colored old man who had been nothing but the sweetest of people to both of the girls for as long as he lived. He was the insignia of innocence in a town so corrupted by it’s own heinous deeds and secrets. 

Perhaps, it was fitting then, that they said goodbye to him, the one vestigial of innocence. 

_ A woman who could  _ **_tame-_ **

_ A woman fueled by her dark past-  _

**_Together._ **

And yet… which woman was which?


	3. Alluvium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Light angst, but really not any because it's non confrontational and very internalized, but then lots and lots of fluff and character background for both of them because Toni Topaz is more than just emotional support for Cheryl!!! Sis has a background!! And we will explore it!! Toni is just as broken as my girl Cheryl.

**i.**

Cheryl was… surprised, to say the least, about how their date was shaping up to be.

FIrst of all, she most definitely hadn’t been expecting to see the girl strut into across the parking lot of the diner in such a possessing nature, each footfall of hers commanding attention.

Her eye catching outfit sure didn’t help in aiding Cheryl to stop from _drooling_ over her.

She was not some some virginal, lovesick, milquetoast being who couldn’t keep it in her pants, for _god's sake,_ she was Cheryl fucking Blossom. She wore that name over her bosom like a badge of pride, and she would be damned before she let Toni Topaz bring her to her knees like so.

Just from wearing an outfit.

In her defense though, the outfit was… _hardly there._

Cheryl could barely keep her eyes off of the girl in the seat next to her, Toni lolling her head gently on the backseat of the car and gazing out the rolled down window of Cheryl’s prized possession. Her red convertible, the one thing in her life she loved more than her matte red nails.

 _She is perfect for you,_ the white miniature angel Cheryl sitting on her shoulder spoke romantically.

 _She will ruin you,_ the red devil sitting on her shoulder sporting her signature color spoke in jest.

 **_Equipoise_ ** _: the equal distribution of weight_

_So perfectly crafted, a human could not be, an angel only._

That’s what she would be, sweet and sour, the bite to Cheryl’s bark. Perhaps the naughty to her nice. _Equipoise._

“So where exactly are you taking me, Blossom?” Toni asked, catching Cheryl’s attention, her voice getting caught in the wind and being lifted over to the redhead’s ears.

“Now where’s the fun in mystery if I let the cat out of the bag, huh Toni? Patience is a virtue,” Cheryl quipped teasingly, glancing over at her companion and finding thick pink lips pulled into a smile.

“Just making sure my new lover is not the last person I see before I get brutally murdered by her.”

“That wouldn’t be _so_ bad, would it?” Cheryl basked in faux confidence. In reality, her self esteem probably kissed the tips of her toes, but not when done in jest. “I _am_ a sight for sore eyes in this town.”

Toni chuckled.

_What a sweet little thing, a true marvel of nature._

**_An angel only._ **

“You sure are, Cheryl, you sure are.”

The redhead’s hands wrapped more sternly around her thin steering wheel of the antique car she drove. She pretended not to hear how in the repetition of Toni’s words, there was a sonorous note of sorrow in the end. It tugged at her heart gently, so softly, like a forgotten note to a song.   
  
But this was the _first_ goddamn date, Cheryl would not fall so quickly.

So _easily._

No, she would not.

She could not afford to.

“Speaking of _dying,”_ Cheryl began again, trying to move them from the uncomfortable silence that wrapped around them in a thick band of intimacy. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, the _closeness_ of it was, Cheryl had barely known this girl for twenty four hours.

“Intriguing segue way,” Toni grinned. “Color me interested.”

“Oh wipe the smirk off your face, your commentary is hardly ingenious,” Cheryl bristled, but kept it to herself that she truly _enjoyed_ Toni’s ability to keep up with her. “Anyways, speaking of dying, if you _were_ to die today, not that you will, but if you _were,_ then who would you call? Who would you leave your last words to?”

Toni’s chin tilted upwards as she leaned back in sudden thought, her fingers rapping a quick rhythm on the sil of Cheryl’s car window.

“Sweetpea, Fangs, and… Jughead probably,” she responded quietly, her brows pulled together in silent reservation.

“ _Jughead?_ As in Betty Cooper’s boyfriend Jughead?” Cheryl asked, rather admonished and surprised.

She was not surprised that Toni knew him, the man was a night owl, scouring the lower side of Riverdale on the daily, making his rounds and sniffing around for stories he could write about. Cheryl had heard from Betty all about how she hated waking up in the middle of the night to an empty bed and then rising in the morning to find him hunched over his computer, clicking away and banging out a new story that he was _sure_ would be a hit _this time._

But Cheryl _was_ surprised that Betty’s boyfriend had been in contact with this alluring woman the whole time and had failed to mention her _ever._

Cheryl was sure she had heard the names Sweetpea and Fangs once before.

“Yeah, why? Wait- you know him?” Toni questioned, sitting up straighter in her seat.

“Of _course_ I know him, the ghoul, he’s dating my cousin,” Cheryl explained, making quick turns onto the narrow dirt path that led to their destination. “I knew he hangs down in the Southside with the Serpents… you’re one of them?”

Toni shrugged, rubbing at the rosy knuckles on her tan hand.

“Yeah, I’m not really part of that life anymore though… I’ve just got some debts to pay off and then I’ll be done, out of it for good. A snake never sheds their skin but… I can leave the gang. Dissociate myself from them for good.”

Cheryl’s eyebrows tugged together as the car gently rolled into a slower pace as they neared their destination.

“Wait, so Jughead isn’t family, a best friend, of course, but you must be close if you would talk to him last,” Cheryl pointed out cautiously.

Toni nodded.

“He’s been a friend for a long time. Ever since he stumbled into Southside tracks sophomore year, looking for his dad. I helped him out and he kind of became my rock I guess,” Toni noted, her eyes misting over in a way that told Cheryl they really were best friends, perhaps something of the sort like her and Veronica.

“Sweetpea and Fangs?”

“Brothers, but not by blood. Or even legal association, actually,” Toni explained, her eyes searching Cheryl’s auburn ones for any kind of judgement. “I’ve known those guys since I moved to the Southside to live with my uncle. They’ve been here for me since I was ten, they’re the closest thing I have to family.”

Cheryl duly noted that Toni spoke of her uncle in the same sentence that she called Fangs and Sweetpea the closest thing she had to family.

But the sanguine haired girl knew how to pick her moments, and this was not one of them.

Perhaps later, when she knew Toni better, when neither girl was scared to put their hearts on a silver platter.

 _A broken girl, just your type,_ Cheryl thought to herself.

The rest of the ride was done in silence, Toni submitting herself to checking out the greenery outside her window once more, and Cheryl struggling to keep her eyes on the road so as to not crash the car and bring their date to an unfortunate end.  
  
Seriously, who wore a mesh shirt over a _totally_ push up bra and covered it only with that ridiculously attractive worn down leather jacket?

 _For fuck sake, Cheryl,_ she thought to herself, rolling her eyes. _Stop acting like a thirty year old lonely virgin._

The posh car pulled up onto the side of the rocks, scraggly and untamed land, very soon, riveting Toni away from the window as she leaned forward to look out the front shield and Cheryl smiled sweetly at the reaction.

“Sweetwater River,” Toni breathed gently, her eyes widened in awe.

“Never been?”

Toni shook her head.

“Back when I was little I heard these crazy stories about how kids would come down, _Serpent_ kids, to be exact, and then they would never be seen again. It was folklore of course, stories spun by the older Serpents to keep as far from Northside tracks as possible, but it worked on me. Something about the river just… scares me I guess,” Toni explained, one hand reaching for the door in palpable excitement to step outside and feel the water against her fingers.

“Do you guys really hate us that much?” Cheryl asked cocking her head to the side and pushing open her door with a shove from her elbow.

Toni gnawed at her lip, looking away from the river for a moment to glance into Cheryl’s eyes.

“ _I_ don’t, I have plenty of friends in the north, but… you guys have done some shitty things to us. Veronica’s dad tried to have the whole South _shut down,_ including the school. He tried to move us out of our homes, legal bindings kept him from doing so, but still. Not to mention that _charming_ boy Reggie Mantle,” Toni rolled her eyes. “He defaced the Whyte Wyrm every damn chance he got.”

Cheryl shivered.

She couldn’t imagine having to live through that much uncertainty, sure her life hadn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, but at least it had been _constant._ Consistently shitty, but consistent

Unlike Toni who lived amongst the cacophonous symphony of filth, hate, poverty, and decay.

If Cheryl were to admit to herself and to the gorgeous girl sitting next to her, then she would have to come clean about having taken part in the movement that was Hiram Lodge’s doing to shut down the Southside High. A younger Cheryl had imagined that the belligerent low life of the South didn’t deserve to be cutting funding from the money split for the schools, that everything should be going towards investing in the school that would _actually_ be producing college graduates.

But in that moment, as the pale girl sat gingerly next to the tan slender body of a woman who had achieved almost, _almost,_ more than she had in a lifetime, Cheryl felt horrible.

There Toni was, a college graduate, probably sitting on a pile of student loans, and as humble as ever. Not at all the kind of scum they had been made out to be by the vicious rich men of the north.

Cheryl’s own student loans had been waved away fairly fast when her business picked up popularity and she had enough money to do so. She couldn’t imagine the same being for Toni, and if it wasn’t utterly impolite to converse about the financial status of someone else, then Cheryl would’ve dropped the bomb and outright asked Toni how much money she needed to be out of debt.

Cheryl could pay it.

**_Floor the brakes, Cheryl, control yourself._ **

She shook it off of herself, shedding it like a dog their fur, and hoping that the intrusive thoughts of spending her whole fortune towards the wellbeing of Toni Topaz would go away.

Toni coughed not so discreetly, clearly moving onto a new subject as Cheryl took far longer than expected to respond to her last comment.

“So what is this trust exercise you’ve got under your sleeve?”

Cheryl grinned.

“You’re going to close your eyes when we get there and then you’ll find out.”

“Cheryl- what? No, what the fuck?”

“ _Language,_ TT,” Cheryl reprimanded, rolling her eyes. Ignoring the way her gut coiled at the scrumptious sound of swears on her date’s tongue. “It’s a trust thing, you have to _trust_ me. So close your eyes.”

Toni shook her head, one hand out in front of herself as if using it as a barrier, watching cautiously as Cheryl stepped out of the car and rounded to Toni’s side.

“I’m a _Serpent,_ Cheryl, literally the first thing they teach us is to never trust anyone. Not even with your eyes wide open,” Toni explained speedily, words spilling past her mouth at the speed of light.

“I’m not just _anyone,_ now am I?” Cheryl raised an eyebrow stopping at the ajar door at Toni’s side.

 _Yeah, you’re_ **_no one_ ** , her own voice reprimanded.

Cheryl blinked it away with conscious effort.

“If this is some kind of weird kinky shit you’re getting me into I swear-” Toni muttered, mostly to herself, Cheryl noted with a sly smile. She was cute off guard, almost _adorable,_ Cheryl would go as far as to think, but never speak out loud.

The high and mighty stripper-by-night and confident Serpent jacket donning badass woman by morning would smite her for even breathing the words in her direction.

“I didn’t think you were the type for vanilla sex, Topaz,” Cheryl teased, an eyebrow kinked upwards as she offered her hand towards the tiny woman slipping over the dewy rocks moisturized by the constant lapping of waters breaking edge and falling forward farther than they were permitted.

Toni scoffed and stuttered, turning beet red.

“I work at your mother’s literal _strip club,_ Cheryl,” Toni faintly defended, taking the redhead’s hand tenderly. “I am far from vanilla.”

“A strip club, sure, but you’ve never stepped foot in the filth she calls a bordello, the seraglio is off limits for you, isn’t it?”

Toni gulped, looking away. “It’s a… _soft_ limit.”

“See? Vanilla.”

“Excuse me! I said _soft_ limit! And it’s not like I see _you_ lining up to be serviced there everyday either!” Toni rebuked valiantly.

“ _Serviced?_ In my mother’s harem house? TT… you have lost every semblance of sanity.”

**ii.**

Cheryl and Toni quipped gently back and forth as the former HBIC guided Toni over the slippery rocks, never once skidding herself despite the glaring difference of footwear for the girls. Cheryl flashing a sparkling heel and a half that came from a top of the line fashion company that Toni probably didn’t even _know_ of, and Toni donning Doc Martens that were worn from, what Cheryl could assume were, countless nights stumbling through dirt roads on Serpent missions.

“So… we’re here,” Toni nervously giggled, her voice high and strained, and Cheryl almost retracted the whole idea.

Toni was _genuinely_ nervous.

“Close your eyes,” Cheryl whispered, leaning in close and ghosting her thumb over the edge of her date’s jaw where it connected with the lower end of her ear. “Trust me, TT.”

Her brown eyes nervously skittered from the water to Cheryl, contemplating, calculating, _watching._ It all seemed like a game, cat and mouse, Monopoly, everything a gamble, everything left up to chance.

And then she backed away.

“I can’t, Cheryl,” Toni stretched her arms out in front of her, almost pleading. “I’m sorry.”

Cheryl let her lips stretch into that pseudo smile she knew _so_ well how to do, the ones that masked her emotions easier than any screen ever could. Not even the safety of social media could make Cheryl seem as impenetrable as her own smile could.

She didn’t let Toni see how disheartened she was by the girl refusing to trust her, she didn’t let Tonis see the multitude of questions collecting behind her eyes like unconsolidated sediment carried by water, _alluvium_ it was called, collected on the banks of rivers.

“Don’t worry about it,” Cheryl shook her head, glancing out to the water which never seemed to hold anything good for her.

Not since it became the holding place of her brother’s body all those years ago.

“Cher, I’m sorry…”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Cheryl shrugged it off, glancing back at Toni who wore the most considerate frown on her face. “Really. It was stupid anyways.”

“Don’t do that, please,” Toni begged, and Cheryl watched in awe as the girl moved forward in all her worn down dusty glory, the rugged edges of a girl with a little bit of metaphorical dirt under her nails (because face it, hygiene always came first in Cheryl’s book) shining ever so bright through the cracks in her side. “I’m sure whatever you had planned was going to be great but I… I just don’t do well with trust. If you lived the life I have, you wouldn’t either. I could never trust _anything_ in my life, from the people— to the ground I walked.”

**_A woman as broken as you._ **

“Would you feel horribly aggrieved if I asked you to explain?”

“Not at all,” Toni smiled gently, reaching out to encompass Cheryl’s hand within her own and leading them back to the car. “Just because I don’t trust doesn’t mean I can’t divulge a few things here and there. Besides, this is less to do with trust and more to do with my horrible traumatic life experiences.”

“Aren’t we all just marionette puppets to life?” Cheryl pondered out loud, meaning it mostly as a rhetorical question.

“Should life have to be like that?” Toni countered gently.

_She can keep up with you._

_She is_ **_everything._ **

_Everything Heather wasn’t, and_ **_more._ **

Cheryl didn’t answer back.

They reached the car in quivering silence that resonated like the pluck of a freshly tuned violin, and Cheryl felt for the first time in her life, as if all of her T’s were crossed and I’s were dotted.

Relaxed and _relieved._

Settling in was fairly easy, with both of them sliding into the backseat of Cheryl’s car and snuggling closer together. It was by no means an all out _cuddling_ session, because Cheryl would rather be found dead than cuddling with someone on a first date, but by _god_ did she want to.

Toni was _right there,_ right next to her, strawberry scent of some perfume invading everything in the interior of the car. How could Cheryl resist her when she was so all out delicious? Like she had prettied herself on a platter and wore a banner over her head that blatantly begged for Cheryl to take a _bite_ out of her.

Not today, though.

Not so fast.

The fun was in the chase after all.

“Go on, TT,” Cheryl finally chided as they sat in silence for a few minutes, playing with each other’s hands.

Toni inhaled deeply, chest inflating with a mighty expansion.

“I’ve been a Serpent for as long as I can remember,” she began. “My parents… they left a long time ago. Abandoned me, left me in custody of my uncle. I lived with him for eight long years at the age of ten up until I was eighteen. I don’t know where they went, I’ve tried really hard looking for them but it was almost like they stopped living on this earth the minute they left. There is not a _single_ record of them,” Toni’s eyes grew more troubled as she went through the story and Cheryl leaned forward into the girl, poorly attempting to comfort her. “I mean seriously, how the _fuck_ does someone manage to stay that under the radar? Unless… unless they’re dead,” Toni monotoned, and Cheryl cringed.

“I’m… I’m sure they’re okay, I mean how many of your fellow Serpents would you be able to find just traversing around _The Yellow Pages_ or Instagram, hm? You guys lay low and probably so do your parents,” Cheryl whispered, affectionately rubbing her thumb over Toni’s knuckles.

“But we’re still on public records, school records, work forms, I mean there are people who are glaring links to us, but _everything_ I’ve ever tried to drag up on them comes out to be another dead end. Things that were terminated the year they left me or in the following years. Nothing current,” Toni explained with a distant sadness.

Cheryl gnawed on her bottom lip. She had never had the most active parental units in her life, and while they weren’t loving or even necessarily accepting of her in anyway, they were still there. That mattered to Cheryl, it mattered to her that even though her mother never truly accepted her and her father never _really_ loved her… she had units over her head that covered her indiscretions from the world with the hoard of money in their banks.

“I’m sorry, Toni,” Cheryl whispered.

“It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone's fault, except maybe my own.”

“Toni…”

“It’s fine,” the pink haired Serpent forced a smile onto her face. An expression that Cheryl knew _so_ well because she saw it in the mirror so often. “It’s no one’s fault but my own. I’ve made my peace with that fact.”

“How could it possibly be-”

“I think that’s enough for today,” Toni forcibly muttered, injecting herself in the middle of Cheryl’s sentence, closing herself off as the redhead pried further. That, perhaps, was where the question of trust came in. Toni didn’t trust her enough to tell Cheryl all of her insecurities, and that was fair enough. Maybe it didn’t have to be like that for them just yet.

**_Broken._ **

Cheryl silently watched, almost despondently, as her date moved to the front seat in suspiciously sluggish movements.

“Yeah, you’re right,” the redhead finally quietly agreed and settled behind the wheel. “That’s enough for today.”

**iii.**

Cheryl lay staring up at her ceiling at the dead of night, her thoughts racing.

It had been a long time since the thought of another kept her up at night, willingly sacrificing good sleep that she should’ve been getting for a long day at work tomorrow, in favor of thinking over and over again about soft pouty lips and pretty pink hair forever.

Her eyes were trained upon the mural above her bed, painted to perfection and each brushstroke speaking a story untold by her own mouth but spoken by the despair of colors sloshed together in areas.

Alone in her giant, hauntingly empty house, Cheryl couldn’t help but wonder suddenly, what it would be like to _not_ live alone.

She had never been inclined towards living with others. The freedom in being surrounded by your own truth at all times in the comfort of your home, it was something Cheryl had craved for as long as she had lived. Caused perhaps by the invasion of always being watched while under the scrutiny of living with her mother, but a distinction within her personality nonetheless.

But tonight.

Not _tonight._

_She has got you already._

Cheryl grit her teeth, _preposterous._ Cheryl Blossom did not _catch_ feelings, _not anymore._

Her phone pinged with a text, catching her attention most definitely for people didn't text Cheryl at the dead of night for no reason. She didn’t have friends like that.

She never had.

With a slightly shaking hand, Cheryl reached over and grabbed the phone from her nightstand, turning it on with a tremor, wishing for the best but preparing for the worst.

And for the first time in her entire life, what she had wished for came true

 **Unknown Number** **_:_ ** _Hey Blossom, you up?_

Cheryl grinned, relieved and excited, knowing well enough who the only person in the entire world comfortable enough to call her _Blossom_ would be. But this was a game, and Cheryl intended to win it.

 **Cherry Bombshell** **_:_ ** _Depends on who’s asking._

 **Top Me Topaz:** _The face in your wet dreams_

Cheryl couldn’t believe she had found it in herself to giggle so easily. Such a light hearted joke, something said so finely in jest, something that Cheryl would’ve found beneath herself a few years ago, and yet here she was now, falling for the same humor she frowned at.

Perhaps it wasn’t that she had suddenly become acclimated to neanderthalic behavior and accepted the fact that she too, was stupid enough to laugh at easy clapbacks such as that, maybe it was just the person it was coming from. Toni could do literally anything and Cheryl would have a fit of emotions over it.

 **Cherry Bombshell:** _Oh Josie, hey!_

She smiled at her own joke.

 **Top Me Topaz:** _Who the fuck-_

 **Top Me Topaz:** _That was not expected_

 **Cherry Bombshell:** _I get that a lot._

 **Top Me Topaz:** _charming, Blossom, really._

 **Cherry Bombshell:** _I try._

For a moment, the flow of texts ceased, causing Cheryl to wriggle in her bed uncomfortably as her eyes skittered up to the digital display of time at the top of the screen.

 _1:03 AM—_ it flashed glaringly and taunted Cheryl.

And almost as if Toni read her mind-

 **Top Me Topaz:** _Now I don’t know a single thing about nightly routines for the rich and powerful… but I’m fairly sure staying up this late isn’t your jam._

 **Top Me Topaz:** _So what’s up?_

Cheryl breathed in and found her fingers hovering over her keyboard in contemplation. What could she say to that? Of course it was known that she had some extensive care routines, it was reflected in her flawless skin and shining glow no matter how she felt physically.

 _Hey stupid, I was just thinking about you_ , Cheryl typed experimentally into the box before deleting it completely and groaning in pure self inflicted angst.

 **Cherry Bombshell:** _Thinking about things, how about you? It’s late for you as well, cherié._

 **Top Me Topaz:** _Hard to get sleep in a place like this._

A lower lip sucked between teeth worrying themselves against plump flesh, Cheryl read over the text, glancing at the empty space in the bed beside hers.

 **Cherry Bombshell:** _Come over? I live in a giant mansion all by myself I would appreciate the company._

Cheryl expected her phone to ping again with the accompaniment of another text from Toni, but she was shaken out of her glum half asleep state as her phone rang more sharply and the words _“_ **_Top Me Topaz_ ** _”_ flew across her screen. 

She picked it up after a few rings, ignoring the disgustingly soft butterflies in her entire torso.

For the first few precariously delightful moments of the call, all Cheryl could hear was the labored breathing of the girl on the other end of the line.

And then-

“Come over? Blossom, really? A booty call?”

Cheryl rolled her eyes into the next universe.

“You called me _and_ you found _my_ number and texted me _first,_ so if anything… you’re the perpetrator here,” she joked gently, and willed away the smile on her lips at the sound of Toni giggling gently into the receiver.

“Okay fair enough,” Toni gave, and Cheryl waited with baited breath of the other girl’s answer. “Thanks for the offer Blossom but I have to take care of… some stuff tomorrow morning, that I wouldn’t be able to if I fell asleep at your place.”

Cheryl ignored the sharp ping of disappointment in her chest much like the ding of her phone receiving a text and focused on Toni for now.

“Why… Why not?”

Toni softly sighed on the other end of the call.

“My uncle is home, Cher, as in he’s drunk and incoherent on my couch.”

Cheryl gasped softly and reached reflexively to the hem of her night gown which dipped generously around the neckline, plunging precariously and giving a sultry seduction that no one but Cheryl ever saw at night. She had never brought anyone home in all of her years of living alone, solely because she was so focused on building her own empire that she had never spared time to look at the others.

“I thought you were already out from under his clutches, TT,” Cheryl wondered out loud.

“I was, _am,_ but sometimes when he gets drunk at the nearby bar and can’t find a way back to his _own_ trailer, he crashes at mine. Without my consent.”

“Well that’s entirely nullifidian and horrifically senile of him. Not to mention that has got to be some kind of violation of law, trespassing for sure, that is _your_ trailer, correct?” Cheryl questioned as her eyebrows pulled together in a knot.

Toni laughed again, but this time it didn’t make Cheryl feel any type of way except overwhelmingly sad. Her laugh was hollow, empty, absolutely obsolete.

“This is the Southside, Cheryl, if things were that easy I would’ve put out a restraining order against him a long time ago. Government doesn’t work over here like it does for you guys, they could care less about the petty crimes taking place over here, do you know how many men and women I know who are abused all the time? Domestically? A-fucking-lot, Cheryl. But no one goes to the authorities not only because the topic of abuse is already a fucking joke, but _also_ because this is the rundown side of town that is only as good as bringing the police department it’s fair share of money when they finally crack down on one of our drug trades.”

The redhead sucked in a deep breath, suddenly feeling deeply troubled by the new information at hand.

She wanted to help Toni, she really did, but what if there really was no way?

“If you would like to take it to court, I know an excellent lawyer-”

“Cheryl,” Toni called, and her mouth snapped shut. “I appreciate the effort, really, but where do you think I’m going to get the money to pay for your top of the line, fancy _schmancy_ lawyers? Not to mention I think I would get lynched by a couple of my uncle’s loyal followers if they were to figure out I brought the government down on his head.”

“So it’s a danger issue,” Cheryl summarized from what she had gotten so far.

“It’s an _everything_ issue, will you please just… drop it?”

A harsh breath sucked in through pearly white teeth and she pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She could only help the girl if she wanted to be helped, there was no denying that.

“Okay,” Cheryl finally gave. “Okay, I’ll drop it.”

“Why do I feel like there was an unspoken _for now_ after that?”

“Perhaps there was. I guess you’ll never know. Or maybe you will,” Cheryl teased.

“The cryptic bullshit really makes a girl who’s always lived on the edge super excited, ya know that? But not in this situation, please Cheryl, for the love of god, don’t go into this with your eyes closed like I know you will. This is not a project for you to a fix, not a proposal to barter over on a round table at the office, this is my _life,_ please respect that.”

And how could Cheryl ever turn down the girl who so politely was asking Cheryl to just let sleeping snakes lie. It was for the best for both of them honestly, Cheryl would keep her heart from falling further into the mess that was Toni Topaz’s life, and Toni would walk away only as scathed as she had been her entire life.

“I respect it, Toni. I do.”

“Thank you.”

Toni gulped in the silence over their call for a minute

“It was nice hearing your voice, Red."

Cheryl blushed profusely.

“I would never admit this to anyone but since I don’t have to see your face or that terribly aggravating smirk I know you’ll do, I’ll say it once… I missed you.”

“Oh Blossom…”

“I mean it.”

“I know you do,” Toni responded, and Cheryl bit her bottom lip. What the hell was she? A giggling fucking school girl. Feeling shy over small emotions for a tiny girl. A _beautiful_ tiny woman.

“I should probably get some sleep,” Cheryl finally whispered, the chiming of a clock somewhere in her house suddenly taunting her and Toni groaned audibly on the other end.

“If you _have_ to.”

“I do.”

“Well then, goodnight Bombshell, I’m gonna be thinking of you tonight.

Cheryl sighed like a sick idiot in love… but she wasn’t, god she wasn’t in **_love_ ** _._

“Goodnight, Topaz, you’ve been the only thing on my mind for awhile now.”

And when finally the click of the call answered to silence and Cheryl could be sure that neither of them were still in the presence of the other, she breathed deeply. Her lungs cleared, and despite the darkness surrounding her, for the first time, it felt like she could _see._

_Control._

_Peace._

**_Balance._ **

 


	4. Wine to the Curious Mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING FOR VERBAL AND LIGHT PHYSICAL ABUSE 
> 
> PROCEED WITH CAUTION 
> 
> In other news, hello, you finally get to meet Jonathan Topaz this character who I have named as Toni's uncle because he is a "John Doe" so far in the Riverdale universe considering that we don't actually know his name or whether he's from the maternal or paternal side of Toni's family. 
> 
> Also major angst warning towards the end of the chapter. Just bear with me.

**i.**

Toni had never known herself to wake up with an optimistic feeling in her gut.

Hopeful, perhaps, but never optimistic. She just wasn’t the type of person to do so, and especially not when she could hear her drunk uncle clattering around mumbling and muttering words of shame and hatred to himself while trying to make it out of her trailer unscathed.

He never managed to execute properly.

The noise of something relatively expensive clashing against the floor pulled Toni out of her daze as she rolled out of bed with a solemn, but _optimistic,_ groan.

“ _Toni_!” He roared finally, probably getting tired of having to find his way out with half of his things missing. Like he always did. “What does a man have to do to find some goddamn cereal in this fucking trailer?!”

 _So much for optimism,_ Toni thought to herself, her shoulders slouching ever so gently as she threw a shirt over her head, one of Jughead’s see through sleep shirts with an _‘S’_ transparently emblazoned onto the torso.

She gingerly tip toed out of her bedroom, listening to every creak accompanied by the barely hanging together trailer that she called her home.

Right in front of her eyes she saw her mess of an uncle, his surprisingly healthy brown hair hanging down over his eyes, white collar of his flannel shirt popped up and lopsided over the edges, giving it a disorderly look that made Toni cringe. The only thing she hated more than him was how unkempt he was in the mornings after a night of drinking.

“I don’t _have_ any cereal, John,” Toni commented rolling her eyes and pulling out a bowl of fruits from her barely cold fridge. “I have fruits if you want that. I’m sure you could use something _healthy_ for once.”

She watched out of the corner of her eye as the man rolled his eyes and flopped back onto her futon. The one thing in her trailer that probably cost more than the whole thing put together. It was one of her prized possessions, it had come in handy many nights that she brought Sweet Pea and Fangs over and there wasn’t enough space in the bedroom for all of them.

“What the fuck kind of kid doesn’t have junk food in their house?”

“A health conscious one,” Toni mumbled. “And I’m not a _kid,_ John, I’m an adult. I literally turned twenty one a few months ago.”

“Did you _really?”_ He asked, turning his head from the couch and peering through the opening in the wall where the kitchen was visible from the living space. “I missed it and you didn’t even tell me?”

“Well, geez, John, maybe if you took time out of drinking yourself silly every goddamn night and crashing on my couch every fucking time as a _convenience_ , maybe you would be more aware of the things happening around you,” Toni quipped harshly, her eyes burning with a fire, hatred bubbling for the man who acted like he hadn’t emotionally abused her for the eight years she had lived with him.

In a flash, he was behind her, pressing her into the counter from behind, sending Toni’s body into fight or flight mode as she stood rigid, a sudden sweat breaking out.

“What the _fuck_ did you say to me, you ungrateful little bitch?”

He pushed her menacingly into the counter top, making the jutted edges of her hips flare up in pain. Toni whined low in her voice, suddenly feeling powerless under the man as his finger wrapped around her jaw and forced her to look sideways. His poor breath swarmed the underside of her ear and jaw, making it difficult for her to even breathe without cringing away.

“John, you’re hurting me-”

“I said what the _fuck_ did you say to me-”

A light knock on the front door of the trailer sent them flying apart as Jonathan Topaz flew backwards to try and regain his stance, as if he hadn’t been ready to make a few disgusting marks on his niece’s body.

Toni spared him one glance before moving hastily to the door, not sure if she was looking to save herself or the person on the other side of the door from his wrath. If it was Sweet Pea or Fangs, they would for sure become his target once more as they had many times in the past when they saved her from dangerous situations with her uncle in years past.

But it wasn’t.

In fact, it was _worse._

Of course Cheryl Blossom had to show up at her house at this very moment, looking pretty as ever, holding a bouquet of flowers in her hands.

“Blossom…” Toni breathed, not sure if she was relieved or almost the complete opposite at the sight of the alabaster woman who brought her so much peace from just being in her presence.

“Hello, Toni,” Cheryl greeted, blissfully unaware of the man breathing down Toni’s neck even though he had retreated inconspicuously to the bedroom and far from them. “I brought you these _stargazer lilies_ because they mean _I miss you,_ and I did indeed, miss you.”

All of that spoken with a dazzling smile on her face, capturing the heart of a certain Toni Topaz who stood at the door, between heaven and hell. Her aggressor behind her, and the woman who brought out the best in her within a few days standing in front of her, flowers in her hand, smile on her face.

Offering the world to Toni on a silver platter.

“Cheryl…” Toni breathed, and then spared a glance over her shoulder, only to catch the glimpse of John disappearing behind the corridor in an attempt to look absent.

“Is… this not a good time?” Cheryl questioned, her hand faltering, retracting the flowers as she followed Toni’s gaze behind her back and obviously seeing no one.

“Huh? No, Cheryl, it’s fine, can we talk outside though?” Toni pleaded, one foot out the door as she moved to shut it behind her, and Cheryl was forced to make space for the tiny Serpent walking into her space.

“Um, yeah, sure. Is that your uncle in there?”

Toni dodged the question, looking down at the bouquet instead and letting a fleeting sense of serenity take over her. Cheryl had done this for _her,_ brought _her_ the flowers and missed _her_ enough to do all of this.

And for the first time in her life, Toni felt _wanted,_ she felt like she was more than a burden with no cereal in her trailer.

“You brought me flowers,” she whispered, placing a hand over Cheryl’s and gazing up into the girl’s eyes, and it felt like she really _was_ stargazing in that moment, much like the name of the lilies suggested. “I don’t think anyone’s ever done that for me before.”

“Chivalry is not dying on my watch,” Cheryl giggled lightly.

Toni smiled at that. “I missed you too by the way, I don’t have flowers to prove that, but…”

She leaned up on her tiptoes, grabbing the lapels of Cheryl’s red coat and pressing a chaste kiss to the girl’s cheek.

Toni was rewarded with _more_ red spreading across the ivory surface of her skin, a bashful grin on Cheryl’s face.

“I think that’s proof enough,” Cheryl’s voice quivered.

“I’m broke Blossom, that better be enough.”

Cheryl cringed visibly.

“Come on, Bombshell, you didn’t seriously think I could be anything but broke if I live in this goddamn dump,” Toni quirked an eyebrow, gesturing to the filth around her with her hand, palm open and facing the sky.

Red locks shook back and forth furiously as she tried to take back her actions.

“No I- I knew you weren’t _well off_ but, it just sounded crass the way you said it I guess. I wasn’t expecting it. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel-”

“It’s cool, Cher,” Toni waved. “I’ve had far worse.”

Cheryl offered her a sad smile.

They stood around in silence for a few more seconds, just staring, looking into each other’s eyes, wondering what happened to the other that made them so broken inside, wondering if they could ever be the thing to fix the other.

Perhaps they could be something beautiful then, after all, broken glass made murals

“How did you find out where I lived?” Toni suddenly piped, curiously peering at Cheryl who turned beet red once more at the question.

“How did you get my number last night?”

“Touché,” Toni tipped her head forward, hand in front of her head as if she was tipping a hat in Cheryl’s direction. “I suppose we’re all entitled to our own secrets.”

Cheryl’s eyebrow quirked as she let a sly side of her mouth quirk up in something that spoke of more than just secrets, but it died down as fast as it had come and left Toni confused as to what it could mean.

“Secrets are the only thing that keep us alive, TT,” Cheryl spoke solemnly, a note of sadness in her otherwise light voice. Airy, like there was nothing else on her mind. “It’s wine to a curious mind.”

**_Wine to the curious mind._ **

“What secrets do _you_ have?”

“I could ask you the same.”

“Yeah, well, I asked first,” Toni jutted her chin out.

“First is the worst second is the best,” Cheryl sported proudly, her eyes shining with a playfulness that resembled a child’s. Something that seemed so new and foreign on her face despite the fact that Toni had known the girl for two days.

Toni leaned forward, letting the whimsical moment get the best of her as Cheryl wrapped long and strong arms around a lithe body. Soft breaths fell upon her forehead, coaxing a false sense of security out of her for Toni could never be sure if she was ever _truly_ safe, no matter how guarded Cheryl made her feel. No matter how many white picket fences Toni saw when she looked at Cheryl, that didn’t mean they would ever do more than decorate her dreams, would they truly protect her if even a dog could dig under them?

She felt lips press against her hairline, which thankfully wasn’t receding yet unlike most of her friends, and let her eyes flutter shut at the sensation.

“It’s been two days, Cher, what have you done to me?”

“I think some people like to call it the _Blossom Charm,_ I’d settle for _Cheryl Effect,”_ she grinned and looked down gently at the woman in her arms. Eyes swimming with softness.

“How charitable of you.”

Cheryl shrugged with a smile. “Charity is just another Blossom badge. Scouts honor.”

Toni leaned away with an amused quirk of her eyebrow. “I hardly think you ever _touched_ a Girl Scout badge in your life, much less being one _.”_

 _“_ You’re right,” Cheryl acknowledged. “Walking door to door selling mint chocolate chip cookies, _begging_ people to buy them, was a little outside my taste. Especially when bottle after bottle of my family’s maple syrup would get sold every second in every part of America.”

“Such an entitled little brat,” Toni apprehensively commented feeling suddenly conscious about her tiny little trailer that accommodated her. (And her uncle).

Cheryl waved it away with her hand like Toni suspected she did with most of her problems.

“Don’t worry TT, there’s something charming about a quaint living space such as this,” Cheryl smiled warmly, and surprisingly enough, Toni didn’t find a trace of ingenuity in it.

“Quaint living spaces yes,” Toni agreed. “But not this, nothing charming about my violence plagued rusting molded trailer house.”

Cheryl’s eyes dimmed at the comment. Toni took it in, her heart growing two sizes at the disposition of the sad surroundings of the posh girl who seemed like she should be anywhere _but_ there. And yet… she didn’t stick out like a sore thumb, kind of like the polished expensive motorcycles that sat outside of the other trailers in the park.

Toni noticed with a start that even though Cheryl’s look didn’t match the surroundings, her aura did.

She was sad, just like everything around her.

The sickly green gnarled roots of weeds that curled over red stiletto heels and probably tickled her toes, seemed to have been there for a long time, grounding Cheryl to a despondency she had grown up with. Perhaps now was the first time she had ever stepped in the genuine filth of rotten roots, but Toni could _see_ Cheryl had been living amongst the quiet torture of a wilted life for as long as Toni had.

“Is your uncle in there, Toni?” Cheryl pressed, and the pink haired girl gulped.

“Yes.”

"Toni-”

“You _can’t_ do anything Cheryl,” the Serpent pleaded, pressing her hand into her easily angered redhead’s torso, hand over the other girl’s heart, pushing her away from the door. “It would only make things worse.”

“You’re _scared_ of him, Toni! You think I can’t see through your charade? You brought me to talk out here because you _don’t trust-”_

 _“_ I don’t trust _anyone_ Blossom, don’t get it twisted,” Toni hissed, feeling her walls climb back up to their heights.

Her alarm had gone off, the one that always let her know when someone was trying to get to know her better, to get into her life. She couldn’t allow that, Toni had sworn off ever getting close with anyone ever again since her parents had just left her one fine day, leaving her to fend for herself against her abusive uncle.

God forbid she give someone else power over her like that ever again.

The power to leave her so **_broken._ **

“I’m just trying to help,” Cheryl whispered, faltering visibly at Toni’s outburst.

“Yeah well,” Toni laughed mirthlessly. “I don’t need your fucking help, I’m not a goddamn charity case for you to tinker with. So leave me the fuck alone, and don’t ever come back here again.”

“I didn’t _say_ you were a charity case,” Cheryl’s eyes grew more desperate with a clear coat of unshed tears.

The strain in her usually level voice let Toni know with a pang of _horrid_ guilt how hard Cheryl was trying not to let the tears fall from her eyes.

“You didn’t have to,” Toni continued despite herself.

“Please don’t do this…”

“Go fuck yourself, Blossom,” Toni finally spat out, hammering the final nail into the coffin as she watched Cheryl stumble backwards a little with physical pain eating her insides. “It’s over. Whatever was here. Whatever could’ve been, it’s over. I’m sorry.”

“ _Toni,”_ Cheryl gasped, her hand shaking, fragile like a leaf hanging on by the last vein to the tree, pattering in the violent rain of a tortured weather. “ _No-”_

Toni backed away with tears clawing at her own throat, threatening to leak out the sides of her eyes as she turned around and refused to give herself the pleasure of running back and comforting the wailing girl.

Cheryl’s choked pained cries couldn’t be heard from the inside of trailer, but Toni could still hear them in her mind.

The empty echo of pain.

**_Wine to the curious mind._ **

Not just secrets apparently, pain too, was just as indulging.

No matter how hard Toni tried she could not erase the noise from her mind. There was no antibacterial soap in the world, no surgery, nothing, that could aid her with that. She could never wash herself clean of the crimson that now stained her hands.

The murder of a Blossom’s heart.

**_Red._ **

Sanguine color. Captivating and incriminating.

Toni had barely recovered from what seemed like the end of her future, when John rolled around the corner of the short corridor that led to Toni’s bedroom.

“So, Toni, a _Blossom_ huh?” He commented with a disgustingly perverted grin.

Her insides boiled.

“Don’t even think about it, John,” Toni threatened, her voice shaking as hard as her body. “Don’t you dare go after her.”

“Why not? She’s already got a thing for one Topaz, why not the other?”

“You’re disgusting,” Toni grimaced.

His eyes flared with an anger that made her press back against the door, wishing for Cheryl’s comforting embrace once more. But she didn’t deserve that anymore, she had shunned the girl away from her with some choice words and that’s what Toni deserved, to not have anyone.

She was a burden, nothing more.

“I would watch your tone if I were you, Toni,” John hollowly spoke. “Now that I know you and Cheryl Blossom are concocting horrid sins together… the kind of things I could do to her… you don’t want to risk it, do you?”

Toni would safeguard Cheryl with her life. That much was true.

“John please…” Toni resorted to pleading, the fight leaking out of her one drop at a time. “Don’t go after her. I’m begging you.”

This caught his attention, as he walked closer to Toni, his breath falsely minty, teeth still dirty as ever as they struck gold on a mint gum between his teeth. His loose strands of hair raked back by greasy hands, eyes wild and untamed, hands stuffed into his pockets

Hands that Toni feared so badly.

She pressed further back into the unstable door.

 **_Escape_ ** _._

Her whole body screamed at her, but Toni could not move, for once an predator has caught you, they never let you go.

“Begging already?” He teased, his tone tight. “Damn she’s got you in a chokehold huh? Fuck Ant…” he laughed coldly, addressing Toni with that nickname she had always despised. “Picked the best girl in town and thought you could get away without saving a little something for your old man? Not in this lifetime.”

Toni squeezed her eyes shut, willing away the tears, the hopelessness that squeezed her gut so tightly. She would not let him see her fall apart.

She would not let him see how scared she was for Cheryl.

“Get out, John,” she finally muttered through gritted teeth.

“I think I’ll stay-”

“I said get the fuck out!” Toni roared, her patience snapping and fizzling, damn the consequences that may come to her body if he were to become aggressive once more. She was _tired_ of him. “Get the fuck out John before I call the fucking cops on you and bust your ass _and_ all your men. All those drug trades you do, I think Mayor McCoy would love a good input from me.”

Green eyes flared with controlled rage.

They reminded Toni eternally of the rotted roots.

His hands flexed, open and close, next to his thighs before roughly grabbing his jacket from the coat hanger and throwing it over his shoulder.

“Fine,” Jonathan spat nastily. “But don’t think you’re seeing the last of me, Toni. I will make you pay for the eight years of hell you made me sit through, trying to babysit your stupid ass. I will get Blossom, and I will make you _regret_ doing this.”

Those were his final words before storming out of her trailer, closing the door behind him with a mighty _thwack_ , and Toni’s knees liquified at the moment her door clicked shut.

He was gone, finally.

For now.

But _finally._

Her phone dinged with a message.

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _*attached image*_

Toni clicked open the image with a shaky thumb and bit down ferociously on her bottom lip at the sight of a pixelated version of the bouquet that was now lying limply on the floor next to her feet.

Cheryl _missed_ her. So soon, so desperately.

 **Toni Topaz:** _Leave me alone._

She dropped the phone onto the flowers.

Toni didn’t deserve the redhead, she deserved what John gave her, she deserved the bruises forming rapidly over her hips from being pressed ruthlessly into her counter this morning.

Cheryl would not be risked, not her safety, not her life, not her existence, not for Toni’s stupid feelings to fester once more and make her weak.

**_Wine to the curious mind._ **

_Secrets. Pain. Love._

The three horsemen of Toni’s personal apocalyptic hell.


	5. Friday Night Strip Tease

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more intense discussions and moments with our good old favorite Choni, but here is some relief from the angst of last chapter considering I left you all hanging for so long due to a troubled moment of terrible writer's block. Which also why I apologize if the writing is weak in this chapter, I simply was not feeling it in this moment, but I put my best forth anyways and this is what resulted!
> 
> Angst lovers: do not fret, I have more than enough in store for future chapters of trials and tribulations for your local gays to go through. choni are far from their happy ending (if at all) as of right now.

**i.**

Days passed and Cheryl still hadn’t heard from Toni, not a single peep, and every time Cheryl attempted to show up at her trailer the thing was locked shut and in severe disuse. Like Toni had moved out and away from the trailer just because Cheryl knew she lived there now.

The redhead almost felt _offended_ at the blatant ignorance of the small Serpent stripper.

All Cheryl had tried to do was help, so who was Toni to turn her down, to _embarrass_ her like that? Leave her humiliated, heartbroken, and sobbing in the middle of a goddamn trailer park on the Southside of town?

And so when Friday night rolled around and Cheryl typed away furiously on her computer, editing and applying the finishing touches to her business appraisal letters, escalations and promotions to be dealt with, she could barely contain her excitement.

Toni could avoid her everywhere, _everywhere,_ except for at the Velvet Cabaret.

“Miss Blossom?”

Cheryl’s eyes glanced momentarily up at the crack in her door and came face to face with her new secretary, Toni’s replacement if she was being honest.

Surprisingly enough, Cheryl had chosen a boy, simply because he had been the most promising candidate, not because he had worked in this field many times before and Cheryl was simply too tired to run a trial and error course with some newbie. Otherwise, cheryl was all for female empowerment and rarely found any men who were competent enough for high up positions.

“Yes, Archie?”

“There’s a woman waiting for you, being rather _loud_ about how badly she needs to see you, is it okay if I let her in?”

Cheryl sighed, tugging her bottom lip between her teeth and glancing over at the digital clock at the bottom right hand side of her computer screen. She supposed she could spare a few minutes to spar with the woes of whoever was trying so desperately to meet her right now.

“Alright, let her in,” Cheryl nodded, waving the ginger boy away as he dipped his head courteously and stepped aside to reveal none other than Veronica Lodge.

Her get up was shrouded, a large, _large_ coat covering her entire body, right down to her ankles, and buttoned conspicuously right up to the hollow of her throat. Something surprisingly modest for a woman who was wearing  a face full of makeup that would suggest she was anything _but;_ Cheryl assumed that the get up underneath the coat was the real eye opener.

“Veronica Lodge, what’s the occasion?” Cheryl tilted back in her chair, pressing the edge of her pen to her bottom lip.

“Well, Cherry,” Veronica spoke, dragging a finger across the mahogany shine coated finish of Cheryl’s work desk. The grandeur of the table _alone_ had most of the impoverished folks in Riverdale praying that Cheryl would distribute her money to them someday. “I happen to know a certain Toni Topaz who is performing tonight, and she asked me _specifically_ to ask you not come… so, Cheryl, as a good friend to both of you, it is my duty to accompany you to the club tonight.”

Drawn in ginger eyebrows knit together in confusion.

“I thought she said _not-”_

“She did,” Veronica interrupted shamelessly. The only woman in the world aside from Toni who could get away with something like that. “But the girl has been gushing about you since she saw you last Friday when you came and met her for the first time. Whatever her problem is, she’ll have to get over it because I see _major,_ and I mean _major, Brangelina_ couple potential for the two of you.”

Cheryl chuckled, sort of genuine, mostly hollow.

“Need I remind you that they broke up? I’m sure you’re up to date on all your magazine tea, and, Toni and I are not… like that,” Cheryl sighed, her eyes softening in the corners with a sadness she hadn’t felt in a long time now.

“The way she’s been storming around the place today speaks differently,” Veronica raised an eyebrow, leaning onto the desk with the side of her thigh. “Cheryl you’ve been texting me about how much you like her and how well your date went _all_ week. And then all of a sudden tomorrow you go to give her flowers and there’s been _radio silence._ I mean what, did you stumble across her and one of those dweeb Serpents fucking?”

Cheryl rolled her eyes at the crass usage of language and unequivocal manner she spoke in.

“ _No_ I didn’t catch her doing any of that. It was worse actually.”

“How the fuck does it get worse than that? She fucked her dog?”

“ _Veronica.”_

“Sorry.”

Cheryl huffed in disbelief and continued.

“I pried, Ronnie. I wanted to help her out of a bad situation and then I only made it worse, and she blew up at me. I probably deserved it, but she hasn’t talked to me since. It’s been _days_ , Veronica, I don’t think I could have made this a bigger colossal mess if I’d tried,” Cheryl divulged, letting her resentment towards the girl’s outburst take control of her for once.

She had bottling this up since that day at the trailer park, convincing herself that it was her fault completely, but who was Toni to be _so_ rude to her when all Cheryl had been trying to do was help?

“You know, Cheryl,” Veronica began sympathetically, eyes misted over slightly. “You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. Take it from a girl who spent her whole high school life trying to get her dad off the warpath and trying to rectify mistake after mistake of his. All you can do is hope that they’ll follow you out to the light.”

Cheryl allowed her mouth to turn up in a gentle smile. She appreciated when the girl got insightful and soft like now. Veronica might not have been the _ideal_ best friend for the owner of the biggest company in America, but she was the best friend Cheryl wanted.

The one she needed.

Just like Cheryl needed Toni.

The dependency wasn’t crippling, but it was harrowing. It made Cheryl think of the girl all day, made her _want_ Toni at night and made her throb for the girl when she thought about luscious lips parted and panting in her mind's eye.

 ** _Dependency is weakness, love_** **_is a disease._**

A quote from none other than her precious mother rang in the back of her head.

A woman who knew what she wanted and knew how to get it.

“Now,” Veronica broke Cheryl’s train of thought and clapped her hands together. “Where is that blonde devil cousin of yours whom we need to collect and report to the Velvet Cabaret _immediately?”_

**ii.**

The club was lowlit tonight, the red lights swapped for something darker, a deep shade of blue, _navy,_ that made it seem almost midnight inside. Whoever ran the lighting for the place sure knew what they did, and they did it correctly, Cheryl wanted to have a talk with them and thank them for the appropriate lighting for tonight.

 _Seductive gloom,_ how fitting.

Her eyes traversed around the hoards of people gathered in different areas, clumped around different stages, and for once, Cheryl let herself meld into the crowd. She wasn’t one person, she was many.

She was the man over at the bar drinking away his troubles, drowning them in one too many whiskies, the man who was throwing useless bills at the stripper, shouting and yelling to fend against the white noise in his head. She was the woman who was stripping and the man who was swooning all at once, Cheryl was omnipresent and she wished to absorb all of these feeling at once, for a girl who had felt so little when she was young, felt so much now.

And then the lights dimmed, all attention attracting to the main stage, Cheryl swimming through the crowd, all of them eager to see _Toni Topaz_ the fast rising star of her mother’s strip club. The woman who had almost doubled the attendance rate of the club on Friday nights between her first performance last week and her second one now.

So may people who wanted her.

_But she is mine._

The feeling flared underneath Cheryl’s ribcage, setting her very heart on fire. She regarded everyone in the room with a shrewd gaze, feeling worse for wear at the sight of so many other prospects, wondering which other woman or man in the room could also make Toni fall for them. Who else there could be ten times the significant other than Cheryl could ever be?

**Jealousy.**

A ghastly look for a woman who prided herself on being so independent, a gruesome practice for a woman so hellbent on never falling for anyone ever again.

An indulgence for the woman who knew she was doing anything but holding herself back.

And then Toni came on, the lights flickering and waving around her body, shaping her into a mystique that could not be seen. A figure in the shrouded darkness, her hips moving from one side to the other, commanding all the oxygen, attention, and seduction in the room. No one else could _breathe_ when Toni was up there, no one could move, no one _wanted_ to move.

Save for the hollering men and women bounding around and throwing their money at her. Save for everyone except for Cheryl. Cheryl could barely compose herself, breathing unsteady. Uneven.

If only her mother could see her now, losing her patience over a _stripper,_ not even one of the low life men who made her mother’s business what it was now. Cheryl was drooling, chasing, _begging,_ because of this one woman who could bring her to her knees so efficiently.

It was captivating, the way Toni danced, draping her body over the pole, moving her legs over and up, bending her body in ways that- _fuck-_ made Cheryl want to bend her over and see how flexible the girl _really_ was. Her legs spread over the stage, running those hands which had been buried in Cheryl’s coat lapels a few days ago over them. Her eyes were smouldering, fucking everyone in the crowd with a fixated stare that the redhead _knew_ she had probably spent hours practicing in front of a mirror.

Or maybe it was natural, perhaps Toni didn’t have to spend hours perfecting it because she was _perfect._ In her own sense, anyways, because Cheryl also knew that the girl would vehemently deny anything of the sort, going on and on about how she lived the lowest of lowly lives and could never fathom ever being _near_ perfect.

But she was pretty damn close for Cheryl.

She threw her head back, dragging her hand down the side of her neck, panting audibly, and though no one else in the audience could hear her, Cheryl watched the hyper rise and fall of the girl’s chest. She could practically _feel_ the undulation of her throaty moans, vibrating under her skin like a fine tuned instrument, plucking away at her heartstrings, playing Cheryl to each note, making her beg for more, wishing she could loop the song, never wanting it to end.

Toni locked eyes with her.

In Cheryl’s daze she hadn’t even realized how desperately she had been searching for the fire gaze, for the woman to set her ablaze, to match the fire in her own eyes with the one in Toni’s.

The reaction was electric in her body, Toni’s stare growing steely and extensively seductive, rubbing more determinedly over her body, like she had a point to make and she would not leave that stage until she had made it.

The music picked up tempo and Cheryl was forced to down her drink, leaving a burn trail of scotch in her esophagus, her teeth clenching together as she hissed in pain and endurance. She was no newbie to this game and damn her if she would be forced into such weak submission by _Toni Topaz_ of all people so quickly.

Toni never stopped looking at her once, dipping and bending low, letting everyone see what was _Cheryl’s._

She didn’t even realize how tight her grip on her glass had become, the tips of her ears beginning to resemble the color of her hair, and her heart racing in the confines of her chest. And for the first time Cheryl realized why ribs were called cages.

A prison for the criminal organ that made people feel this way.

Toni dragged her tongue across her bottom lip and leaned over the edge of stage running a lone finger over the jaw of a considerably younger man, a fine looking man, his lewd grin spreading across his face like butter.

Cheryl growled low in her throat.

_Hers. Only hers._

_You’re_ **_mine._ **

She didn’t stay to watch the end of Toni’s dance, weaving her way between sweaty bodies and finding her destination backstage instead. There was no time to waste if _this_ was the game Toni wanted to play, Cheryl might’ve been ready to give her space but like hell was she going to let someone run their grubby undeserving gremlin hands all over her girls pristine beautiful body.

_Her girl?_

Cheryl bit down on her bottom lip punishingly.

 **_You’re the real threat_ **.

The doubt seeped through the fissures in her personality with ease, flooding the parts of her that were already hollow and pounding relentlessly against the concrete parts of her; aiming to weather her, break her down.

There were people pressed against dressing rooms, women spritzing perfumes, men hounding after them like the dogs they were, ambiguous non binary people lounging around in their multi-gender nonconforming clothing. Cheryl didn’t wish to get lost in any of it, knowing that it would be time wasted when she could be finding her way to her destination. On any other day, perhaps Cheryl would’ve taken the time to indulge in a little flirty talk with the pretty brunette woman pressing herself into her arm as she walked past, but today, she was on a mission.

Today, she would not be swayed by their wishes.

“Reggie,” Cheryl called, reaching out as the young bartender brushed past her on his way back to the bar. “Where is Toni’s dressing room?”

A disgusting smirk crossed his face.

“Why, you looking to get some?” He teased, eyes alight with the boyish glint that most straight girls would die for, but it did nothing for Cheryl. In fact, it made her mad, why did everyone think that the only thing she was good for was sex? It didn’t matter that that _was_ what she was going back there for, she was going back there to claim what was hers.

“Just tell me where the fuck it is, you fumbling oaf.”

He pointed to the way back where a door was shrouded in luminescent led bulbs that gave the door leading into the room a sort of dubious glow.

A shiver ran down Cheryl’s spine at the sight.

She spared him one last incriminating glance, making sure he didn’t follow her back into the room before slipping into Toni’s private quarters.

The inside of the room was much _much_ warmer than the rest of the club, Cheryl realized with a startled look, pausing to look around her. The desk was a smooth oak, much different from the rough wood of the rest of the strippers in her mother’s club, on top of it were the assortment of different makeup kits, some of them sprinkled with Toni’s own equipment. There was a picture of a young Toni with two people who Cheryl could only fathom were her parents, her heart softened ten times at the sight.

She creeped up to the frame, dainty fingers wrapping around the edges of the fragile memento, and she took in with a jolt, the sheer _joy_ on a young Toni’s face. Her smile plastered so deeply on her mouth, digging up into her cheeks so far that it seemed like she never _stopped_ smiling.

Cheryl wondered how long it had been since Toni had felt like that again.

There was no more time to assess anything else in the room because the door burst open letting the scent of alcohol and burning cigarettes, ashes and dust, waft in with the smell of strawberry perfume.

Very familiar strawberry perfume. It made Cheryl’s insides clench.

Toni stumbled in with a giggle, her senses slightly inebriated but mostly seeming herself, shoving back a girl who tried to enter. She still hadn’t noticed Cheryl standing still as a child playing Wax Museum behind her, Cheryl caught a glimpse of the girl. Damn her, she was pretty…

_Prettier than Cheryl?_

Her hands shook, maybe this had been a bad idea after all, maybe she shouldn’t have-

“Cheryl?”

Tired and defeated eyes snapped up to curious and questioning ones, Cheryl teetering gently in her place, bracing for the inevitable outburst.

And yet, it never came.

“Cheryl what… who let you in?”

“No one,” she responded, her voice small. “Reggie pointed me in the direction but- I let myself in.”

Toni’s shoulders stiffened as she glanced down at the picture in Cheryl’s hands and _god_ could Cheryl have looked less like a perpetrator if she had tried? She looked _obsessed,_ breaking into Toni’s dressing room for whatever it was worth, prying into her personal life. She was a mess, and not one that anyone would have wanted to clean up.

No amount of janitorial staff in the world could pull Cheryl out of this, no matter how much money she had.

“Okay,” Toni whispered, shutting the door behind her with a click and leaning against the frame of it. “Okay, why are you here?”

Cheryl toyed gently with the tip of her newly manicured honeyed maroon nail.

“To apologize,” _not the truth but close enough._

“And?”

**Fuck.**

“And nothing,” Cheryl shrugged, trying to come off as nonchalant as possible.

“No definitely and _something,_ Cheryl,” Toni narrowed her eyes, crossing her hands over her chest. “You didn’t just come back here to apologize, Cheryl. I know you better than that.”

“You don’t know me at all, Toni,” Cheryl countered, feeling her bottled rage simmer underneath the cap. “You _left me_ sobbing in the middle of  your fucking trailer park and didn’t even so much as explain why. I know you’re scared of your uncle, and I _know_ you’re running away from me, but that is _no_ excuse to treat me like the gum on the bottom of your shoe.”

Toni scoffed and looked away. “So that’s what you came here for. To exact the score, to let me know that what I did was shitty. Look, Cheryl, I know what I did was bad, and that you deserve better than me. I let you go! What more do you want?”

Cheryl gently placed the picture back on the dresser table, scared for the life span of it if she were to hold it any longer.

“I didn’t want to be let go, Toni. I was willing to give whatever we had a _chance.”_

Toni shook her head, walking away, to the other side of the room, putting as much distance as she could between her and the richest girl in town.

“I’m _broken_ Cheryl, you don’t want me. Trust me on this one.”

“Why should I trust anything you say when you refuse to do the same with me?” Cheryl shot back, fire playing with fire.

“Fuck, Cheryl, do you really have to bring that up all the goddamn time? So _what_ if I don’t trust you? It’s been three days, _three days,_ I know lesbians are super being on the U-haul concept, but I don’t roll like that, Red. I can’t trust anyone, hell, the only people who have my trust right now are Sweets, Fangs, and Jughead, and do you know how long it took for them to earn that?”

Hands flailed, chests bobbed up and down, jaws flexed, and bodies moved closer together until Cheryl and Toni were right up in each other’s faces once more. Eyes beating waves of flame into each other, their anger radiating off of them in steady pulses that accompanied the beat of the heavy bass music outside.

“So what, you’re not willing to give me the time of day to prove it to you?” Cheryl whispered lowly, their faces dangerously close.

“It takes more than a day, Cher, that’s what I’m saying,” Toni breathed, her voice a mere shadow of what it used to be now. Cheryl doesn’t miss the way her eyes swoop down to the taller girl’s lips, even if it is for the splitest of seconds, it was there. She wanted her.

“I’m sorry, TT,” Cheryl let her hand lift lightly, grazing up over Toni’s neck, and playing gently with the baby hairs at the nape. “I shouldn’t have pried, I know that,” her other hand traveled across the shorter girl’s waist. “You have every right to be _mad at me,”_ her voice took on a sultry quality, leading Toni over to the couch which is placed so conveniently in her room. Toni gulped at the notion, plopping back down into the comfy seat, watching with rapt attention as Cheryl leans over, hair cascading and creating a curtain of red around them. “Perhaps… you should teach me a lesson for it?”

Toni’s breath faltered, and then within a flash, the whole mood in the room changed, grew heavy with desire and weighed down on Cheryl as she felt her lover’s hand tighten on her waist and yank her down roughly. She straddled Toni most conveniently now, a hand having slunk into her wavy vermilion locks, done perfectly _just_ for the girl she wanted to see.

“So tell me, then, Cheryl,” Toni grunted lowly, her hand tightening in Cheryl’s hair, tugging her head back as full and soft lips brushed against the pulse point on her throat. “Tell me why you _really_ came here because you and I both know you fed me a load of bullshit. You’re not here to apologize, or grovel, you’re here for something and we both know what it is. So just say it.”

Cheryl’s jaw locked shut, she _refused_ to let Toni know. She would not give up her pride that easy.

Toni bit down on her pulse point, _hard,_ and growled

“Fucking _tell me,_ Cheryl.”

More silence.

A sneaky hand rubbed harshly over the material of Cheryl’s satin underwear, when the fuck had Toni even reached under her skirt?

Cheryl gasped raggedly, a moan slipping from her lips as she thrust forward in search of more, already embarrassingly wet, and there was no relief. Toni had retracted her hand as fast as she had put it there.

“Come on, Blossom,” Toni flicked her ear lobe with the strong pink muscle in her mouth. “I could have you screaming in _minutes_ if you would just tell me.”

“Fine, fuck, _fine,”_ Cheryl caved, feeling the suction of Toni’s mouth around her ear. “Because you’re _mine,_ because you kept touching and teasing the people out there and you’re _mine._ You touch _me,_ you make _me_ want you, no one else.”

The redolent scent of Toni’s fruity essence surrounded Cheryl suddenly as she felt before she heard the growl of Toni’s assent rumbling in her chest under the taller girl, cold air rushed around her, and then she was a bottom. Her back pressed against the soft cushions and-

And then nothing.

There was no soft pressure of a gentle girl above her, there were no hips dipping and rolling into her own, there was quite literally, _nothing._

Cheryl’s eyes fluttered open as she looked up and found Toni staring down at her, standing next to the couch now, a hand caught in her own pink hair. She grasped at the roots, a look in her eyes that Cheryl could not decipher for the life of her.

Luckily for her, she didn’t have to.

Or rather, _unluckily._

“That shouldn’t have happened,” Toni whispered, eyes frantic as she took a step back. “Cheryl, that- _that-”_

“Felt _great_ ,” Cheryl implored openly, wishing that Toni would feel something _anything_ for her.

“No, see that’s the problem, Cheryl!” Toni groveled. “The problem is that things like this aren’t supposed to feel great for me! I’m not supposed to look at you and want everything that I can’t have. I mean for fuck sake, Cheryl, I was raised on the complete opposite side of the tracks in more than just a physical sense from you. You’re this rich, _amazing,_ girl who deserves so much more in life than a broken girl with nothing to give. I have _nothing_ Cheryl, you hear me? Fucking _nothing!”_ Toni began screaming, pointing a finger at herself and jabbing relentlessly into her chest. Cheryl was quite truly _frightened_ for the girl in front of her who began to look smaller with every second that passed.

Despite herself, Cheryl softened more than she believed possible.

“Why don’t you let me show you otherwise?” She proposed, rising off the couch and ignoring the absolute _disgusting cheesiness_ of the motion, holding her hand out to Toni.

The gossamer facade Toni had on, the careless use of words and abandonment of all hope that she wore on her back like a cape, slid off easy in that moment. It could’ve very easily been a one time thing, in Cheryl’s mind, logically, she knew that it could just be Toni feeling particularly idyllic after getting all her anger out.

But in the way Toni slid her hand gently into the open alabaster palm of the taller woman, letting Cheryl pull her into the comforting petite chest of a well built Blossom, she knew this would last.

She hadn’t perforated Toni’s walls for good, or even _all the way_ for that matter, but it was a start

Toni’s temple rested on Cheryl’s shoulder as the trademarked _Blossom Bitch_ wrapped a hand around Toni’s waist. She hoped the pressure felt like a zephyr, a gentle breeze, barely there, only coaxing comfort from the depths of her heart.

They swayed back and forth, the music fading in the outside but still playing in the back of their minds, a grazioso tune perhaps.

Before Cheryl knew it, there was a wetness on her shoulder, a damp awakening to her senses as she felt Toni grasp her more desperately, little body shaking with small sobs. Her face buried further into Cheryl’s neck, she would not for the life of her let the redhead see her face like this, for there was something comforting in opening up to someone behind the safety of some type of wall.

Cheryl didn’t expect Toni to trust her just yet. No, of course not, because if there was anything she had learned about the girl in the last few days was that she didn’t trust easy. Whether that be a personality trait gained from years of mistrust created by a indolence of poor parenting.

Or whatever the girl had closest to a parenting figure.

In the moment of quiet, Cheryl wondered what her mother would think of this. Her perfect little girl, the crafted creature built to carry out the Maple Industry someday, mounting it onto her back like her forefathers had, caught in a crescendo of emotions with a stripper from the Southside in _her_ club.

It gave Cheryl a _sadistic_ pleasure, she enjoyed knowing this would make her mother’s skin crawl.

“You are something else, Blossom,” Toni suddenly whispered quietly from beside Cheryl’s head, as the business woman let a final smile grace her lips gratuitously. “I’ve never had someone work this hard from me even _after_ I made them forget their names in bed.”

Jealousy lit a small match under her chest again, the fumes of the past sizzling, but Cheryl swallowed and watered it away.

A Blossom did not lose her pride more than once for the _same_ reason.

“This is just phase one of my vendetta against the Southside,” Cheryl joked lightly, glancing down at her hand cradling the small of Toni’s back, and pressing her dainty fingers more gently into the pressure points she knew existed on the back of almost every person.

“Oh yeah? And what would that be?” Toni went along, quirking an eyebrow and leaning away, opting instead to wrap her arms around the redhead’s lengthy and inviting pale neck.

“I would infiltrate your little menagerie of serpents through you, and then attack, simple as that,” Cheryl shrugged, rocking to the beat of the calming music outside.

Toni said no more, playing instead with the baby hairs at the nape of Cheryl’s neck.

“I would be awfully sad if you wasted all of this on some petty f-”

Cheryl could hold back no longer, wrapping her arm more concretely around Toni’s mid section, pulling the girl in for a long awaited kiss. Her matte painted mouth enveloped Toni’s hot and wanting one, both of them whimpering simultaneously into the motion, the grip on the baby hairs at the back of Cheryl’s neck tightening unconsciously.

The slight pain of it turned Cheryl on again as she pressed more desperately into Toni, wishing, needing, wanting, _desiring_ more.

And in that moment, it was like a click of doors settling into frames, keys fitting into locks, the universe aligning for a split second, and everything was _right._ This was the feeling Cheryl had been yearning to feel for her whole life, finding the one person who didn’t make her whole, but twice the person she could ever be instead.

She was whole alone, but the right person would make her double that.

Toni was **_it._ **

Cheryl just _knew,_ there was no reason to ask how, because the woman had never felt a stronger emotion in her life. She might have been knew to the whole intimacy concept, but for a person who had never truly felt wanted in her life by anyone who meant more to her than a platonic love, mouths molding together hotly, in a constant push and pull of _equity,_ Cheryl was enamoured.

She moved to let her tongue invade Toni’s mouth and the girl pulled away with a gasp.

“Cheryl…”

“Don’t run,” Cheryl commanded, seeing the obvious internal conflict in Toni’s eyes, each emotion and decision fighting for dominance over the other. “I know this is no paradigm of romance, far from any kind of archetype that could ever exist. But I know you felt what I did, there was no way you couldn’t have. Please, for me,” she whispered, and while she demanded control with one hand, she relinquished it to Toni with the other. This was up to her.

Toni glanced dubiously up into dark orbs, and Cheryl’s jaw locked defiantly.

And then she felt a hand on the back of her neck, pulling her back down into a heated kiss.

She could work with this.

She would earn Toni’s trust, she knew she could.

Cheryl knew fifteen different languages and was more than proficient and fluent in all of them.

She was a connoisseur in almost every aspect of life.

She was a desperate soul in search of another.

**_Control. Balance. Love._ **

Cheryl would have Toni, she needed her. No matter what the consequences.


	6. WikiHow to Chokeslam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is yet again, yes you guessed it, angsty! 
> 
> I deeply recommend that if you don't enjoy angst you click away from this story because 50% of this is going to be angst with the other 50 some good old fluff because I'd lose my mind if I didn't write some fluff. 
> 
> Enjoy!

**i.**

The underbrush rustled beside Toni’s feet as she swept alongside the greenery, thinking, wondering, basically daydreaming.

Though it wasn’t daytime, in fact it was the middle of the night and she was hopelessly wandering to nowhere.

It just so happened to be that on that strangely humid Saturday night Toni couldn’t find sleep within herself or her mind, calling it quits on her attempt to submit to her subconscious and instead slipping into a breezy shirt and pants to take a walk around the park.

In all honesty, the Southside was _nice,_ far more of an attraction than the ages old North could ever be. Toni found walks along the sides of the park where the demolition and desolation of the lives and buildings within was little to none. Where people could count all the broken lives in the area on one hand. The growth of weather beaten, contorted roots were in their prime on the outskirts, kept neatly trimmed by maintenance workers who were financed by the North and traveled a little farther than they were meant to by accident.

She only made it slightly farther up the path when she found a sullen figure lurking around the edge, seemingly spying, and if she looked a little further, Toni could just barely spot a bonfire with _Ghoulies_ skipping around and chanting some ritualistic bullshit.

_Jughead._

It had to be, there was simply no other explanation for a ghoul lurking in the middle of the night.

 _Ghoul,_ Toni repeated the word in her head, mulling over it and licking the contours with her metaphorical mind tongue. That’s what Cheryl had called Jughead, a _ghoul,_ and as any Blossom would have it- she had been correct.

“Jug?” Toni called, kicking rocks disastrously far out of her way, clearing the path like she did every time those damn gardners attempted to block the path with some meager rocks.

His head swiveled around, almost snapping the tendons in his lanky neck, desperately trying to catch sight of who was calling his name in the middle of the night on the least traversed path in the entirety of the Southside.

“Who is it?”

 _“Ouch,_ Jug,” Toni rolled her eyes stepping into view, or more like galloping into view, as she burst forth from the underbrush into his line of sight. “I would’ve thought you recognized my voice after five years of doing nothing but talking to each other about our problems.”

His face slackened, softened, and buttery smile slid across his face as he stepped aside and let his long time best friend joined him at the edge of bank that slopped down into a fiery pit of hell where Ghoulies danced, jumped, panted, sang, and did everything a nomadic caveman would.

“Shove it, T, you know I’m bad at like _everything_ a normal person is, except for being a sleuth and a writer,” Jughead scornfully reminded, his anger directed at everyone he would like to call a _‘carbon copy of societal expectations in human form’._

“Save me the god awful ‘ _I’m a weirdo’_ speech, as if i hadn’t heard it about fifteen hundred times,” Toni rolled her eyes assuming her position next to him.

“My best lines yet,” Jughead mulled quietly to himself.

“What… are you doing out here?” Toni asked, glancing down at the sorry excuse for Southsiders; rejected Serpents and the like.

“Investigating.”

Toni cocked her head to the side.

“For my _book?”_

“Right!” Toni exclaimed with a nervously apologetic laugh. “Right, totally didn’t forget about that.”

Jughead rolled his eyes, the blues disappearing and giving way to the whites and Toni recoiled at the sight. She hated it when people did things like that with their eyes, rolling them so hard that they looked possessed.

“Don’t worry, you’re not the only one with a vendetta against my _exposé,”_ Jughead grumbled, reaching down and fidgeting with the camera hung around his neck.

“Trouble in paradise?”

“I suppose so,” Jughead sighed, turning away from the ghastly visuals in front of them and finally facing Toni fully. “Betty just thinks that I should give up this whole book thing and get a job. Which I mean- _yeah_ would be logical, but imagine if one of these books does good? Or one of my old books gets discovered by a director and then I make millions of money off of it with a whole ride dedicated to it in Disneyland?”

Toni smiled lopsidedly, feeling her best friend’s pain, but also knowing that there was an ounce of truth in what Betty said.

“Hate to break it to ya, Jug, but I doubt anyone is ever going to get as lucky as J.K. Rowling did,” Toni reached up and rubbed a hand between his shoulder blades.

“I know,” he pressed two fingers against his temple in a despondent manner. “Things are bad enough that Betty apparently talked to Cheryl and she got me a position in her company if I want it.”

Toni’s breathing stilled.

_Cheryl._

It had been merely twenty four hours since the last time she saw the redhead beauty, both of them coming to a silent agreement that they were _friends with benefits_ until further notice.

Cheryl had left the dressing room that night with her lipstick smeared all over the corner of her mouth, the lipstick she had boasted that _never came off,_ and a replica of it on Toni’s mouth. She would be a fool not to realize the raw potential they had together as a duo, but to Toni, that was _terrifying._ She had never genuinely been part of something that was good for her in more than one way, Serpent gang included.

“Sorry you have no idea who that is-”

“No, no, I know who Cheryl Blossom is, Jones,” Toni grimaced. “I have been acquainted with her on… multiple occasions.”

Jughead’s eyebrows disappeared beneath his grey beanie, a bit too immature of a hat for a man of twenty one if you asked Toni, as he stared down at Toni with many questions in his eyes.

“Back up now… you-”

“I know her.”

“No but it sounded like _more_ than just knowing her,” his eyes narrowed and he took a step forward, forcing Toni back as she felt leaves sticking out from the bushes tickle the backs of her ankles. “Tell me you’re not _fucking_ Cheryl Blossom.”

Toni opened her mouth to protest, because _no_ they hadn’t slept together yet, and they had just kissed once. But what else could she call _friends with benefits?_ They certainly weren’t in a relationship but they were a little more than just friends.

Suddenly she wished the underbrush would do more than just tickle the back of her feet, instead swallowing her whole into the earth where she wouldn’t have to confront Jughead. The man whom she had ranted to one night about how much she hated how _gung ho_ the rich of the Northside were about all their money.

“Well not _yet-”_ is what Toni settled for before getting interrupted.

“Oh my god, out of all the people in the Riverdale, T, you had to pick _her?”_ Jughead asked, no malice in his voice, but a note of disgruntled complacency.

“What’s so bad about her, huh?” Toni fought lightly. She wasn’t going to argue with her best friend over a girl, but something about how he regarded Cheryl made her prickle.

“She won’t be any good for you Toni,” Jughead shook his head, looking down at his hands and wringing his wrists. “She… could be a trigger.”

“A trigger?”

His face clammed up almost immediately, shutting down whatever route he had been going down

“It’s not my place to say, but Cheryl’s not all roses and rainbows,” he warned. “She has a past, a _dark_ one, and it’s her story to tell, not mine. All I can say is that, please be careful around her.”

Toni’s mind raced. It wasn’t that she _hadn’t_ noticed the certain sadness in the way that Cheryl moved around, the way she was almost _desperate_ for any kind of affection. In fact, the way the redhead groveled at Toni’s feet, begging for forgiveness even though it had been _Toni_ in the wrong also that day by the trailer, it solidified in the Serpent’s mind the idea that there was more to Cheryl than the just the surface of edgy wannabe depressed rich girl.

She had never doubted that there were traumatic experiences in Cheryl’s life, honestly, who in Riverdale didn’t have those? She had heard about the death of the Blossom boy of course, orchestrated and aided by some of her very own Serpents, but she hadn’t assumed that it had affected any of those cold shells of humans.

Of course, Toni hadn’t been _aware_ of Cheryl during the time of the Blossom murder.

Everyone knew about Jason because of the town rage building over it, but no one ever talked about Cheryl, about the forgotten Blossom heir, never seen in her full glory. Suppressed by her brother in his prime, and overshadowed by his death in his afterlife, the attention always on the older child, the conceived _better_ child.

“No I… of course,” Toni trailed off, hand reflexively reaching to her pocket where her phone was stashed. “I really like her Jug, I mean, I’ve never been one for serious relationships and I don’t trust her. But… have you ever just looked at someone and felt your heart go… _fuck, that's the one, that’s the one for me?”_

A goofy smile took over her best friend’s face as he glanced down at his toes and nodded bashfully.

“Everyday Tiny, everyday.”

 _Yeah,_ Toni thought to herself. _Yeah, me too._

**ii.**

By the time Jughead left, the time was closer to one a.m. than midnight, and Toni reached into her pocket, pulling her phone out with a low groan. The dang thing had been dug so far into her pocket out of rage when she left her trailer, upset by the sudden lack of sleep that she had been experiencing.

There was a text awaiting her from two minutes ago.

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _Is my night owl still being a lurker?_

Toni attempted to wipe the god awful stupid grin on her face at the sight of the top notification in her phone.

 **Toni Topaz:** _So what if I am?_

The speed at which she received a response was alarming to say the least.

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _Well I’d like to ask what it is that you’re doing_

 **Toni Topaz:** _okay_

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _…_

 **Toni Topaz:** _You said you’d like to ask… I haven’t received any questions yet_

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _You are insufferable_

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _What is it that you’re doing at this ludicrous hour, Miss Topaz?_

 **Toni Topaz:** _Miss Topaz? Kinky._

 **Toni Topaz:** _I’m walking around by the side of the tracks. I just got rid of Jughead’s stupid ass after I caught him trying to take candids of some Ghoulies rumbling down at the pit in the middle of the night. Betty would beat him black and blue if I didn’t get him home now_

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _Ugh, ghoul._

Toni smiled, finding herself acting just like one of those cheesy tumblr posts that she saw every once in a while. Her heart fluttered with every text that rocked her phone with a gentle buzz, and every word that Cheryl spoke seemed to flow with prose and poise, she never seemed to be uncomfortable in her element.

She could’ve been losing at any game and Toni was sure the girl would find a way to make her opponent feel like _they_ were the one losing.

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _Thank god you got rid of him, Cousin Betty is already livid about his inability to stop looking like a sleep deprived garbage bag with greasy hair and blue eyes._

 **Toni Topaz:** _Lol really though, he looks like the last time he slept was in the womb_

Then there was silence. The absence of a text for what seemed like an eternity to the girl who had been swapping texts back and forth rapidly for the last few minutes. It made Toni squirm with indecisivity, what had she done wrong?

Logically she knew Cheryl could be doing something or surfing something else on the internet, putting Toni on halt for a minute-

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _I laughed… how do I compute that to text_

Toni giggled, like honest to god, giggled. Jesus, who _was_ she? This certainly was not the Toni Topaz she had built herself to become, the hard shelled, difficult to get through woman who took no shit from anyone. The woman who hardly even cracked a smile in the most hilarious of situations if it was with anyone outside of her three friends, she _was giggling_ at something Cheryl said.

Not even because it had been funny.

Cheryl being confused was just plain adorable.

 **Toni Topaz:** _Most people just text ‘lol’ or ‘lmao’ or even the occasional ‘KSJKFHSJHD’_

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _Literally what. None of those make me NOT sound like a gremlin. Lol’s are weird, like so devoid of feelings, and lmao’s don’t feel right unless done in caps and I’m not a caps girl. The last one… well… I’m not a twitter girl, let’s leave it at that._

 **Toni Topaz:** _Just say you’re picky and go_

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _Oh fuck you Topaz_

 **Toni Topaz:** _Okay_

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _*attached image*_

Toni grinned as she clicked on the screenshot and found herself looking down at a WikiHow page labeled ‘ _How to Chokeslam an Annoying Bitch’._

 **Toni Topaz:** _You’d have to actually be here to do that_

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _Well considering I’m not sleeping…_

Toni tensed, as much as she would love to see Cheryl she wasn’t _really_ keen on Cheryl coming down, it would’ve been way too dangerous considering the Ghoulies were still near and any Serpent who saw money walk down the terrain covered in a flashing red coat and Prada heels would definitely try to mug her.

 **Toni Topaz:** _That’s not a great idea, Cher_

 **Toni Topaz:** _What if I come down to your place?_

This was madness. Utter insanity.

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _Are you sure?_

 **Toni Topaz:** _Hell yeah I am_

**_Hell no you’re not, Toni what are you doing??_ **

**Cheryl Bottom:** _Well then I await your arrival impatiently and  I assume you know where I live_

And so suddenly, Toni was taking the graveled path of rocks and underbrush back down to her trailer, hopping on her bike, and setting her helmet snuggly over her head. Revving the engine with a promise of delivering her to her destination… at _Thornhill._

**iii.**

Money wasn’t something new to Toni; she had been around her fair share of stacks, carrying them back and forth between drug trades, making sure that nothing was lost or someone’s head would roll.

But she had never been around _money_ such as the Blossoms.

The sheer power that oozed from the houses, from their towering domes to the dormer windows rested against the tops of endless garages, the glint of the chandelier coming through the peephole and Toni was nowhere _near_ the door. The vines wrapped gently around the outer poles that lead into the house, a gracious walkway reminding everyone on their way in that they were in the presence of something much greater than them.

Toni gingerly made her way around the house, heeled boots falling in a gentle _click clack_ against the marble stone, pulling her tattered leather jacket more concretely onto her body as the wind suddenly picked up.

 **Toni Topaz:** _Knock knock, Red_

 **Cheryl Bottom:** _You could’ve rung the bell, you know, we spent a lot of money perfecting just the right tune with a fourteen carat diamond studding over the bell._

The Serpent rolled her eyes, failing at keeping her eyes away from the doorbell alone that already cost more than her entire existence.

It glinted back at her all knowingly.

_Ding dong doorbell bitch._

Toni didn’t get the chance to text back because the heavy decadent wood of the Blossom’s front door swung open and behind it was an ever beautiful Cheryl Blossom in her sleepy glory. Her hair was only _slightly_ disheveled from what Toni assumed was her long hours spent in bed, tossing and turning, searching for sleep.

She looked _ethereal._

“Wow…”

And then Toni berated herself mentally for sounding so goddamn dumb.

A blush spread across ivory cheeks as Cheryl bashfully tried to remain stoic against the clear admiration.

“Wow yourself, Topaz,” she reached forward and ran a manicured hand over the leather lapels of Toni’s serpent jacket. “You look beautiful, Cheryl,” Toni smiled, taking in the sight of a bare faced Cheryl.

There was something soft about her tonight, her exposed face, her nightgown that probably could buy out the Whyte Wyrm. It made Toni want to drag Cheryl down and press their mouths together in a searing kiss.

“And you look dashing, Toni,” Cheryl bit down tantalizingly on her bottom lip. “As much as I enjoy the rugged Serpent leather look… I want to rip that jacket off of you.”

“Do it,” Toni challenged lightly, knowing the Blossom heir would never cave like that.

Cheryl smirked slyly, stepping out of the doorway and letting her small pink haired Serpent in, as the little girl took in the wonders of the house around her. It was a mansion in its own right, truly not something she ever believed someone could live in for their whole life without feeling like a plastic piece of a Barbie world.

“Welcome to Thornhill, a husk of a house that I have managed to salvage and make a home,” Cheryl greeted waving her hand at the display of gratuitous wealth around them.

“Does your mother live with you?” Toni asked, intrigued.

“Oh god no, Antoinette,” Cheryl shivered, closing the heavy door behind Toni with a dull thud. It made Toni felt just slightly like a trapped animal. “She lives in Thistlehouse, which is near the barn. I don’t let her in the luxury of the mansion.”

“Thistlehouse…”

Cheryl slipped her hand into Toni’s dragging the smaller girl with her in a gentle waltz of steps, a glorified walking, and led her to the window through which Toni could see just past the large hill of their family estate.

Over the hill peeked the top of a chimney leading to a stone faced _mansion still_ and Toni realized with a startle that _that_ was Thistlehouse.

“And that’s… your idea of _not_ luxury?” Toni turned to Cheryl who was regarding her with a carefully arranged expression.

“Well, yes. It’s a pigsty in there right now, the furniture is covered in dust that is going to ages to scrub out even by the finest cleaners in the country, and it’s right next to the barn,” her expression grew solemn at that mention of it. “Yes… the barn.”

Toni’s eyebrows pulled together, taking a step forward.

“What’s wrong with a barn?” Then she added for good measure, “I’m sure it’s bigger than anything I’ve ever lived in.”

Cheryl shook her head, a nervous tick wringing her wrists together. Her eyes clouded with pain and _fear._

Jughead’s warning rang in the back of Toni’s mind.

 _“_ **_She has a past… a dark one.”_ **

“The barn… it has… it has _secrets,”_ Cheryl shivered, daring to glance in the direction of the Thistlehouse chimney for longer than a few seconds. “There are things Toni, very bad, not _good_ things that have happened in that barn.”

**A dark one.**

**A past.**

**_Broken._ **

“Do you want to talk about it?” Toni offered.

“No,” Chery sniffed, turning her head up and away from Toni. “Begone with your sappy offer to invite sadness, that’s not what we’re here for tonight.”

Toni fidgeted and then gingerly followed after Cheryl as she walked languidly up the Y-shaped staircase that opened on two sides up to the same landing. Cheryl’s red nightgown trailed shortly behind her, acting as a moving red carpet for Toni that she could never truly step on.

A constant reminder of how she would never _truly_ be a part of Cheryl’s world.

Her world built of dollar signs and cents.

“So why haven’t you been catching up on that beauty sleep I know you need _so_ desperately?” Toni asked, galloping up the last few stairs.

“For… reasons,” Cheryl winced.

“Oh good answer, princess,” Toni rolled her eyes.

Cheryl grew red around the neck.

“ _What?”_ Toni prompted with a sly smirk. “Don’t tell me that got to you.”

“It’s a… _weakness,_ I suppose you could say,” she whispered, her pride too loud.

“Bottom,” Toni muttered

Cheryl’s jaw locked, Toni could see the contours of the strong muscle as it flexed under her ear, but the redhead said no more.

_Bingo._

She didn’t press the matter further but it was duly noted.

The high and mighty Blossom, richest woman in New York, could be brought to her knees so fast.

“Anyways, are you going to tell me these reasons or am I going to have to pry them from you myself?

“Oh Toni,” Cheryl swung open doors that led to a literal _terrarium._ “We have all night to discuss the finer, lesser, inadequate points of tonight. But for now, let’s enjoy the moment, shall we?”

Toni opened her mouth to object but snapped it shut when Cheryl pushed through a glass flap, leading them out onto a spacious balcony adjacent to the terrarium. It was led out by vines and roses that almost acted like arrows to the outside.

“ _Wow…”_ Toni breathed in true awe

“You’ve said that quite a lot.”

“There’s a lot to say that about."

Cheryl nodded, dragging her hands over roses that were decoratively hung from top class vines binding the walls of the house.

“I used to come up here as a little girl all the time,” she breathed nostalgically. “It’s an escape room. For me, anyways, unbeknownst to me it was where Daddy _also_ grew the stuff for his main business.”

“Stuff?”

“Weed, Toni,” Cheryl raised an eyebrow.

“ _Oh.”_

Toni scratched the back of her neck feeling awfully stupid.

“The Blossom name was not as clean cut as everyone thought,” Cheryl quietly spoke, so much so that Toni had to strain to listen. “There has been things going on underground for as long as I can remember, and there probably still are. My mother simply doesn’t just get her money from one source, the brothel, she does odd jobs for men associated with the mafia and mobs all the time. That’s why I let her live near the barn, for all her animalistic investments, settlements, and work that she has to do.”

“Is that why you don’t like the barn?” Toni pressed, leaning into Cheryl as they both pressed against a guarded rail that kept them from falling off the balcony

Cheryl huffed.

“Hardly enough reason to write off a whole building.”

“What?”

“Sorry, what I mean is— no, that’s not why I dislike the barn,” Cheryl flashed Toni an apologetic smile.

And in that moment, Toni _knew._ She understood, that as much as _she_ needed time to grow and trust Cheryl, the same held true for Cheryl. The woman who had clearly more past on her back than a vampire living for centuries, would be a tough nut to crack.

Cheryl wore her Blossom name like a badge, yes, but in the dead of night when no one else saw, she wore it like a cloak that weighed her down.

She was scared of her past, her life, her surroundings

Toni toyed with the idea, realizing how similar it was to her own.

“My uncle’s trailer is a no-go for me,” Toni caved, looking up sideways at Cheryl’s face.

A curious look, hardly even _attempted_ at masking, crossed Cheryl’s stoic expression as she looked down at Toni’s imploring eyes.

“Why?”

Toni gulped.

“He’s housed me for eight years, he was the only legal guardian I had. Everything that needed to be signed for the first few months my life had to go through him, government documents, school enrollments, petitions for this and that- you name it,” Toni took a deep breath. “It wasn’t until I turned eleven, a year into living with him, that he decided I needed to _pay_ for living with him.”

Cheryl softly gasped next to Toni. She plowed on, realizing that she would never open up again if she clammed up now.

“He told me that I needed to get a job, so I did. I started working on the weekends and even on the weekdays when I had time. I took every offer to do on and off jobs for fellow Southsiders, and even though the pay was low because we were all poor there, it was _something,”_ Toni’s breathing faltered.

She remembered it all too clearly, the satisfaction of thinking she had finally appeased her uncle, the look of genuine happiness on his face when she handed over her first paycheck.

A paycheck she had never even thought of keeping to herself, that’s how deeply devoted she had been to making him happy.

“But then…god,” Cheryl wrapped an arm around Toni’s back. “He started drinking. The more time that passed with my parents not showing up month after month, he was beginning to realize that he really was stuck with me now.”

Toni could barely keep herself from shaking.

“It finally happened on an unusually cold October night. I had asked John if I could have Sweet Pea and Fangs come over for a sleepover and he-”

The first sob broke through Toni, her chest wracking.

Cheryl held her as tightly together as a broken girl could.

“He beat me _black and blue,_ Cheryl. I wasn’t able to _move_ the next morning, there wasn’t a single inch of my torso he hadn’t marked.”

Toni shook with a painful memory of the night, John’s hands coming down relentless on her, cussing her out, telling her she was good for nothing and she was the reason he had nothing left. She could still feel the way her gut had recoiled with every punch and slap, the way an eleven year old Toni had suddenly grown so cold and numb from so much pain that she had just laid there and let John do the Devil’s work with his hands as he took his anger out on her.

She had kept her eyes trained on a half empty bottle of Grey Goose Vodka the whole time.

“Oh my god, Toni, I’m so sorry-”

Toni waved it away, attempting to calm herself and the tears now steadily falling from her eyes.

“Not your fault, Cheryl. I wanted to tell you because I want to trust you, I want you to _know_ what a bad man he is,” Toni turned and grabbed Cheryl’s hands, slipping her palm beneath warm hands and wrapping her fingers around limp wrists. “The other day in front of the trailer… I want to apologize for blowing up at you.”

“You’re fine, TT-”

“No, I’m not,” Toni shook her head. “Hear me out. You didn’t deserve to be yelled at, you didn’t deserve to be left crying in a place that I damn well knew you could be at risk of getting jumped by greedy Southsiders. You didn’t deserve to have to grovel at my feet for forgiveness that day at the Velvet Cabaret,” Cheryl’s eyes softened with each word Toni spoke. “What you _deserve_ is for me to apologize now. To tell you that I had only been trying to keep you safe when I told you to leave.”

Cheryl shook her head, confusion clouding those beautiful and striking eyes that Toni rarely knew to ever be unsure of themselves.

“I… I don’t understand, why would _I_ not be safe?”

“He’s a bad man, Cher. He knows we’re…” Toni hesitated. “We’re doing stuff. That we have a thing, of sorts.”

Cheryl smiled at the awkward stuttering around their relationship status.

“Girlfriends?”

**_No._ **

Suddenly, as if prompted by a possession, Toni snatched away from Cheryl and put distance between them.

**_Not girlfriends._ **

“Toni?” Cheryl called.

“I don’t do relationships,” Toni coldly stated.

Cheryl’s eyes grew soft with sadness, a pleading hand reaching out, only to drop despondently when Toni moved rapidly out of the way.

“So what?” Cheryl sighed, no malice in her voice. “None of this means anything to you? The kiss? The texts? The flirting? The opening up to each other?”

“Friends do that too.”

Cheryl bit down harshly on her bottom lip, dragging Toni’s attention down to the motion.

No, they weren’t girlfriends, but _god_ Toni wild give just about anything to kiss Cheryl right now.

Cheryl scoffed and turned away.

“Some interesting friends you must have.”

Toni felt her insides burn.

“I should go.”

Cheryl whipped her head away, Toni’s entire view now just the back of her auburn head. Whether she was hiding tears or not, the Serpent suddenly felt guilt roll in her gut. Jughead had  _specifically_ warned of how Cheryl was, he had told her that she was fragile, and yet here she was, hurting the very person she had promised her best friend she wouldn’t.

“Maybe you should,” Cheryl whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Toni bleakly apologized. There was nothing she could do to make this better.

“Don’t be,” her answer was frigid. _Chilling._ “I should’ve known better than to let Southside _scum_ into my house and expect better behavior.”

 _That_ brought Toni’s attention rearing back to the redhead.

“What the fuck did you just say about me?”

**_I sound so much like him._ **

Toni ignored the way icy heat flared in the veins of her hand. She was nothing like him, she _couldn’t_ be.

“Nothing, TT, just leave.”

“This is some bullshit, you know that?” Toni scoffed loudly. “You’re just like all of the other rich stuck up children in and around this town. I was _stupid_ to think you could’ve been any better than them.”

Cheryl’s eyes glistened with unshed tears, but they fell blindly upon Toni. She was just using her viscous flow of money to woo the Serpent, that’s what it was, the late night terrarium walks, the meeting her in the dressing room of her _own mother’s_ strip club, Toni was being bought— plain and simple.

“You _were_ stupid to think that,” Cheryl spoke grittier, lower, _harsher_. “Thought I can't say I was expecting anything more from a Southsider.”

“You know what Blossom?” Toni stepped menacingly closer, Cheryl moving back, fear in her eyes that Toni was suddenly _feasting_ off of. “You’re a spoiled brat. Always have been, always will be, and whatever happened in that barn? You probably fucking deserved it."

Hell froze over.

Cheryl bit down on her trembling bottom lip and Toni swore if she looked hard enough she could see blood glinting harshly against pearly white teeth.

Nothing more was said, no more words exchanged, Cheryl took a deep breath and stood far from Toni, her hands wrapping dangerously around a thorned vine.

“Cher,” Toni sighed, her anger dissipating with every stab of guilt she felt in her soul. “You’re gonna hurt yourself-"

“Like you care.”

Toni looked away, ashamed.

“I do.”

“Like hell you do.”

Suddenly, even the awfully spacious terrarium situated inside a house that seemed to go on for miles, made Toni feel claustrophobic. She needed to get out, get away from Cheryl, ever since they had met they were doing nothing but _hurting_ each other. How could they live like this? They had known each other for all a few days and Toni was already ready to overlook their indiscretions and mend the relationship.

That was dangerous.

Toni never stood down, for anyone. Not since John had taught her otherwise, anyways.

She was a grown woman, capable of handling herself, and so she would. With or without Cheryl.

Even if that broke her heart.

“Then I guess we’re done here,” Toni commented monotonously, only a micro molecular trace of sadness.

Cheryl said nothing, hand tightening around the vine.

When Toni left, she could swear there was crimson dripping down the side of the wall. Cheryl’s own blood, spilling, like it had many times in the past, unbeknownst to Toni. Thistlehouse was a husk of house, made a home by Cheryl’s own blood, sweat, and tears.

But mostly sanguine, _sanguine_ , blood.

It tore Toni apart on the inside, vines growing over her heart and ripping into the muscle like it did Cheryl’s hand. They grew down her veins and blocked her arteries, and Toni was convinced that soon, she would explode.

She would combust and _her_ blood would splatter the sidewalk in gruesome art.

A crimson painting.

She mounted her bike, securing the helmet around her head and looked up at the balcony where Cheryl’s satin nightgown blew in the breeze, a hand cradled within another, staring down intently at Toni.

 **Pain. Lust.** **_Anger._ **

With one last glance at Thornhill, it’s empty soulless windows staring down at her, Toni stole away into the night on her motorcycle, pain making it hard to breathe, determined to get some goddamn sleep, leaving a certain Cheryl Blossom wallowing in her own tears as both girls cried for a future they could not have.


	7. Free Fucks for Saving the Environment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep in mind that the beginning scene is v e r y important here! The scene right up until I jump cut to Betty being in Cheryl's house, all of that will play a roll in unraveling future mysteries, so read carefully and don't forget about it! 
> 
> Also here's some fluffy Choni because @cherylbottom on twitter was ready to commit for some soft Toni.

**i.**

Cold seeped through the window of Cheryl’s bathroom as she stood facing her mirror. Her window was slightly ajar, letting the air of the cool night carry oxygen graciously through her trailer sized bathroom.  

_ Trailer sized,  _ Cheryl mulled over, realizing with a start once more, that she and Toni hadn’t spoken in forty six hours. 

It was three a.m. on a Monday night, or a Tuesday morning, and Cheryl could not for the life of her just  _ go to sleep _ . Whether that be the courtesy of the fact that she couldn’t get far enough away from her phone without wanting to make the disastrous choice of texting Toni first, or because Cheryl  _ really  _ was just having a bad night- she would never know.

The bags under her eyes were becoming more prominent now, a look that Cheryl hadn’t sported since she graduated high school and left the clutches of her mother and her past forever. 

Her hand trembled against the porcelain countertop of the sink, white on white, her hand almost blending into it, save for the black fissure designs in the material that helped her stand out from it. This was the same hand, wrapped in a bandage a few minutes ago, before Cheryl ripped it off with her teeth when it would not come off from the brute strength of her other hand.

The bandage had managed to cover the deep cuts she had forced upon herself that night on the terrarium, the balcony, where Toni had left her once again, crying and wondering where she had gone wrong.

_ What if there is something wrong with me?  _ Cheryl wondered to herself, then and now, as she stared back at the ghost of a woman floating in the mirror. Was that the real her? Was it the woman in the mirror? How could she know that  _ she  _ was not the reflection staring back at the real thing through the glass? 

That would be less painful than being the real person. 

Her mother had made sure that Cheryl was aware on multiple occasions, that she was a  _ wretch,  _ a  _ rascal,  _ a  _ bogie,  _ a  _ fiend,  _ all words synonymous with the devil. 

Which Cheryl  _ also  _ happened to be. 

“ _ Good grace, Cheryl,”  _ Penelope had hissed as she caught Cheryl watching girl on girl porn at the age of thirteen. “ _ Not only are you a disgrace, but you put herculean effort forth to be akin to Lucifer too!”  _

Cheryl had cowered beneath her covers that night, pondering over the words, wondering whether Kevin Keller would be akin to Lucifer since he had been the one to give her the idea.

**ii.**

_ Cheryl wandered the halls of a poor excuse for a middle school that made her yearn to be moving on to high school already thinking about the way Heather had smiled at her that morning.  _

_ The way the brunette had squeezed her hand with a gentle tilt of her head to the side like a confused puppy, but the knowing look in those chocolate eyes had been nothing short of informed; Heather  _ liked  _ Cheryl, like really liked her. Something the girl had not felt since Moose Mason had kissed her on a dare in the playground when they were eight.  _

_ It was a different story that Cheryl had only felt disgust at  _ that  _ fact. Men did not appease her in the least.  _

_ She stumbled through the corridors, attempting to get to her math class in quite a daze. Luckily for her, she had already read the syllabi for the class during spring break, she could spend all sixty five minutes of the class imagining the way Heather’s hair looked in the sun or how Heather’s eyes crinkled up when she smiled really wide. _

_ Something she did a lot when she was with Cheryl. _

_ Of course, in the middle of her daydreaming, Cheryl had the utter misfortune of bumping into a confused and flustered Kevin Keller who hastily pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose; apologizing profusely as he gathered both of their folders from the floor. _

_ “S-Sorry, Cheryl,” he stuttered in plain fear of the girl who was known at such a young age for being the destroyer of dreams. _

_ “No problem,” Cheryl commented back sweetly.  _

**_Sweetly._ **

_ If there was one thing Cheryl Blossom wasn’t, it was sweet, and yet here she was, being utterly kind to the boy whom she despised for being Betty Cooper’s confidante instead of herself. _

_ He looked taken aback for a second, and in that moment, a million thoughts rushed through Cheryl’s head. _

_ Should she ask Kevin about… gay things? She definitely should. Her own local trustworthy source. _

_ “Kevin, would you mind meeting me in the library for lunch?” Cheryl asked, squinting her eyes at Kevin who glanced around them as the hallway emptied out slowly, the time ticking closer to the ringing of a bell.  _

_ “No, um, I guess not, is there something wrong?” _

_ Such a shame Betty chose to confide in a boy who could rarely even be confident about himself.  _

_ Not that Cheryl could say much different for herself.  _

_ “Just some questions,” Cheryl smiled, before patting him on the shoulder like she was dusting it off. “Thank you, Kevin, I’ll see you later.”  _

_ And as had pursued in the library, Kevin sat gingerly beside Cheryl quite literally on the edge of his seat. The pizza boat he had bought from the school supreme lunch line lay abandoned on the table in front of them as he gulped nervously and waited for Cheryl to speak first.  _

_ Which she did.  _

_ “I want you tell me about queer folk,” and then she mulled over it before adding, “and gay sex.”  _

_ Kevin sputtered. _

_ They were thirteen, the kids in her school were losing their virginities left and right, and almost seventy five percent of them would’ve lost it by the time they turned fifteen, Cheryl didn’t believe it was unnatural to pop the question.  _

_ Perhaps she could’ve just googled the answer.  _

_ It was too late now.  _

_ “Wh-Why do you want to know-”  _

_ “Save the theatrics for someone lost in the cislunar who has never seen you dress like the next  _ Karan Johar,”  _ Cheryl deadpanned, impatiently tapping her nails in a pitter patter rhythm against the plastic wood edge of the library chair made out of a filthy synthetic fiber. _

_ “Who is Karan-”  _

_ “A gay Indian film producer and director, now will you  _ please  _ answer my question?” Cheryl implored, glancing out the glass walls of the enclosed library within their middle school. _

_ Just outside of it she could see Heather through the lunch room doors, tapping her foot against the dingy tiles of the cafeteria floor, half mindedly responding to the friends that surrounded her, her eyes searching for someone else. _

_ Cheryl grinned inwardly, insides alight with a kindred joy.  _

_ Heather was looking for  _ her,  _ she looked like a kicked puppy because she could not see  _ Cheryl.

_ It made Kevin’s stuttering and messy response all the more aggravating.   _

_ “Why are you asking me Cheryl?” Kevin leaned in, his knack for collecting the drama in the school festering in him since his young years. “Are you…”  _

_ “I’m curious,” Cheryl responded curtly. Her mother would have her head if news ever got out that she, the Blossom blood child, was into the twisted ways of a society yet to be accepted fully by the higher ups. “I find it fascinating that-” _

_ Her rather rickety and disorderly complete lie of an explanation was interrupted midway as the doorway to the library swung open and Heather walked in, a large smile on her face.  _

_ It was just a side note that her other friends, future Vixens in the making, trailed behind her.  _

_ For Cheryl, all she could see was glowing, radiating woman walking through the doors like a trailblazer in fire’s wake.  _

_ “Hey honey,” she called out, and Cheryl melted. “We’ve been waiting so long for you, but we’re going out now to eat in the courtyard. They opened it because of the unusually warm weather, you coming?” _

_ And how could Cheryl ever say no to her when Heather beamed down at her, eyes inviting her for more than one reason?  _

_ How could Cheryl ever say no to her in general? _ _ And so as Cheryl moved, eyes solely trained on Heather, Kevin grabbed her hand and pulled her down, for a split second, they were on the same wavelength. _

_ “Porn, Cheryl,” he recommended, the silly idea spoken in a serious voice. “It sounds terrible, and it  _ is,  _ my dad would kill me if he ever found out… but, it’ll teach you everything you need to know.” _

_ And though Kevin might’ve thought he was being secretive about it, Cheryl caught the way his eyes flickered to Heather and back at the end of the sentence. He knew, god, he knew, and Cheryl was  _ relieved.

**iii.**

That had been the beginning of the end for Cheryl’s life as she knew it. Things got better and worse from there on out… a lead up to her finally getting away from her  _ sinister  _ mother, a lead up to the barn incident. 

Cheryl grit her teeth and forced away that memory. 

Never again. 

Steeling herself against another flashback, Cheryl grabbed the rubbing alcohol from under the sink and poured it graciously onto a cotton ball before applying the material to her wound.

The cut wasn’t  _ that _ deep, compared to what Cheryl had been victim to in the past, but it was caused by a dirty old vine in her balcony, she could easily get sepsis if not treated with care.

Although aside from Veronica nobody would really care if she  _ did  _ get sepsis.

Not even Toni.

The thought pained her, she had seen in Toni what had been radiating in Heather, a proud need to be herself, a woman inebriated by her own strong beliefs but never in over her head. A personality that never gave out, a woman who could hold herself up amongst the ashes.

She had been wrong though, Cheryl’s fists balled tightly, Toni hadn’t been the woman she thought.

**_“Whatever happened in that barn? You probably fucking deserved it.”_ **

Cheryl shivered as she remembered the malice in Toni’s voice, hissing out words that she knew not the meaning of. 

Though she was sure the denouement of their relationship was already set in stone, Cheryl yearned for a true closure with Toni, more than just seeing the girl ride her motorcycle off into the night, itching to text and ask her if she had reached home okay; only to then see the smear of blood on her screen from her fingers and realize who had been the cause of that. 

Cheryl dragged those very fingers over her face now, cursing herself for being like this. Why could she never get a simple crush like everybody else? Why was she doomed to either falling in love with someone or never feeling anything more than platonic intimacy? No healthy middle ground. 

By the time she exited the bathroom, it was chilling in there, and Cheryl regretted being dressed so scantily with a simply nightgown as it settled into her bones despite having moved out of the room. 

A breeze bristled through the lower sphere of her house, sweeping around her feet, causing Cheryl to stop by the stairs and squint down at the door.

It was just slightly ajar.

Her neck prickled and she eyed around the giant mansion that she  _ knew  _ had simply too many hideouts for her to be able to brief all in this moment.

If somebody was out for her life they would just have to deal with her in the bedroom.

Cheryl shut the door with a thud before finally retiring to bed, a shiver sneaking and wrapping down her spine as she closed herself in her bedroom. 

_ Safe for tonight. _

**iv.**

“Cheryl what is up with you?” Betty fretted gently, holding her cousin’s hands within her own and peering gently down at a pale face.

“Nothing,” Cheryl muttered.

“Don’t lie to me, you missed work for the first time  _ ever _ and then you told Veronica to ‘ _ fuck the fucking fuck off _ ’ which is not only very rude but extremely off brand for your usually Dickensian vocabulary,” Betty raised an eyebrow. 

Cheryl rolled her eyes, feeling only slightly guilty.

“So what, have you finally left Forsythe Pendleton for the raven stallion? Considering she tells you  _ everything  _ now?” Cheryl ragged, avoiding Betty’s actual impending question. 

Betty settled into the seat next to Cheryl more concretely, both girls wearing their most raggedy clothes, which in Betty’s fashion was a sweatshirt and jeans and in Cheryl’s fashion was the thousand dollar nightgown from last night. 

“Stop avoiding the question and  _ no  _ I don’t  _ like  _ Veronica like that, just some friendly platonic attraction is all,” Betty huffed, crossing her arms over her chest like a child.

“Oh stop overreacting,” Cheryl mused. “I just had a bad weekend and I’m taking some time off from work to recuperate, do I  _ need  _ to be checked every second of the day to make sure I’m not suicidal for sane reasons?”

“For a woman who was in a meeting via the phone right up until she was sedated for an appendix removal?  _ Yeah,  _ you do need to be checked when you leave over trivial reasons,” Betty pointed out.

Cheryl’s eyes scattered over the inside of her house, checking the visible nooks and crannies regularly, still spooked and miffed over the door incident last night. Truth was, Cheryl had more than just one reason to stay in,  _ yes  _ she was bummed over her argument with Toni but that was nothing to miss work over. 

Feeling the looming threat of having her house broken into…  _ that  _ was more serious.

“I assure you Cousin Betty I am working to my fullest power right now, I’m just tired. I might be Cheryl Blossom and about as close to god as a human can get but I still do have my moments,” she commented in her usual self aggrandizing fashion.

Betty let out an incredulous laugh. 

“Well okay, Cheryl, if you say so.”

Cheryl narrowed her eyes.

“You’re hiding something.” 

Betty’s eyes grew wide as she turned away and attempted to begin what was known as the world’s  _ worst acting.  _ Cheryl could spot a lie from a mile away, that was why poorly done movie never appeased her, the cringe acting always made her more uncomfortable than anyone else. 

“I am  _ not,”  _ she shook her head, blonde hair swept up into a ponytail swinging back and forth. 

Cheryl sat up straighter and grew rigid. 

“What are you not telling me, Betty?”

As always, it only took a little bit of prompting for her weak willed cousin to cave.

“I  _ might _ have called for some back up to help me out of your slump because V said it would help…”

Her eyes cast downwards and away from Cheryl as said girl tended. Knowing Veronica there was only one person she could’ve possibly recommended to Betty-

_ Three raps against her door.  _

**Shit.**

“Is that her?” Cheryl asked, her voice demanding and both of them knew the answer to that question.

Betty quickly stood and followed Cheryl as they trekked through the intimidatingly large mansion that still made Betty’s hair stand on edge. Cheryl, on the other hand, was more nervous about their new guest. Or rather, recurring guest, who she had not seen for fifty plus hours now.

She swung the door open as much as she could with the power of her arm against the heavy material. 

Spare Cheryl her heart, of course Toni was standing on the other side wringing her wrists together, questions in her eyes and her posture  _ so  _ different than what she had been sporting when Cheryl had last seen her Sunday night. 

Soft washed out pink stripes waved gently in the breeze that was just barely wrapping around Cheryl’s exposed ankles and making her shiver for more than one reason. Toni’s face was devoid of any make up, soft and welcoming, even though she was dressed more ruggedly under a black crop-top, ripped jeans, and a black choker with a ring in the center that was  _ begging  _ to be put to good use.

And of course, an incredibly sexy denim jacket that Cheryl could barely look at without getting turned on.

“Cheryl…” Toni breathed, their eyes drifting together.

**_“Whatever happened in that barn? You probably fucking deserved it.”_ **

She could not go one word now without Toni’s insult wavering in the back of her mind, taunting her with the memory of that  _ horrible  _ night in the barn. 

“Homeless hobbit,” Cheryl responded coldly. “To what do I owe the… Well not  _ pleasure _ , more so…  _ dis _ pleasure.” 

Toni winced.

“Betty called me, said you needed some looking after?” 

Cheryl glanced sparingly over her shoulder at the blonde haired she-devil.

“Hm, well I don’t know why she would,” Cheryl turned back to Toni, moving to slam the door on her face. “We’re  _ fine.”  _

The door swung back full speed, only to stop inches away from the frame as Cheryl watched in slight horror as Toni wedged herself into the house.

“Cher we’ve gotta talk-

“Nothing to talk about.”

“ _ Please- _ ”

“You said what you had to, and I got the message loud and clear. Now if you would please stop  _ shoving  _ yourself into my house I can go back to my day, and you to yours,” Cheryl muttered, even though her heart broke with each word. 

How could she push away the woman she was beginning to grow attached to? How could she when all she wanted from Toni was an apology?

But would that make things better?

Could Cheryl ever look at Toni now and not hear that fateful sentence ring in the back of her mind? 

“Cheryl, I’m  _ sorry _ , okay?” Toni practically pleaded from just outside the door, half of her body barely hanging inside. “I’m  _ sorry _ , please let me in so I can fix this.” 

For a breath stilling moment, no one moved, not Betty in the back who was quietly taking it all in, realizing for the first time the kind of relationship her cousin had with the stripper from Penelope’s club. Not Toni who watched eagerly, trying to decipher the expression on Cheryl’s unchanging face, and  _ certainly  _ not Cheryl who weighed her options against her better judgement. 

After long seconds, Cheryl looked to Betty with a silent instruction, their eyes meeting and conversing before the blonde haired girl politely stepped past Toni, opening the door in the process and letting the pink haired Serpent breathe as the pressure arose from her chest. 

“You don’t have to grovel for my sake, Toni,” Cheryl grumbled, her defenses coming down quick as the last of Betty disappeared behind her estate where the car was parked. 

“I didn’t mean what I said that night, Cher,” Toni whispered. “I.. I say and  _ do  _ things when I get mad. It’s self defense really, and I don’t mean to play the victim when I say that.”

Cheryl sucked in a deep breath. She knew what it was like to  _ snap  _ under the pressure of something, in all of the years that she had been living, every single time she insulted someone for something trivial it was the result of her patience giving for a split second. It was result of all the abuse she had piled on her back that she could never take out on the people she wanted to the most. 

She stepped aside and finally invited Toni, ignoring the way her heart fluttered when the pink haired Serpent breathed a sigh of relief.

“You had…  _ no  _ right,” Cheryl finally spoke once they were settled in, Toni sitting across from her on the couch, facing each other, their eyes trained on the other’s dangerously. “No right to say the things you did. You don’t even  _ know  _ what happened in the barn.”

“I was going to text you, but I thought it would be better to do it person and I just never got the balls to do it until Betty called me today and I realized… shit man, what if that’s like the fucking universe telling me to get in here and stop shying away from things that scare me?” Toni explained quietly, garnering Cheryl’s undivided attention.

“A text would’ve been ludicrous.” 

“I know.” 

They smiled at each other for the briefest moment, and it bears mentioning, Cheryl felt  _ completely  _ vulnerable.

“I didn’t mean the Southside scum comment either,” Cheryl quickly put in, realizing she too had things to apologize for. “The relationship comment… brought out the worst in me I suppose you could say.” 

Toni’s eyes softened guiltily around the edges.

“While the classism was futility at its finest,” the articulate serpent quietly composed. “I  _ do  _ understand why you reacted the way you did.”

“You do?”

“Cheryl,” she sighed and scooted forward, hands halting for a second above Cheryl’s before the girl nodded affirmative and Toni held her hands tight. “I don’t know if  _ you _ can understand what I’m about to explain but, I am terrified of relationships. Of any sort, platonic, familial, romantic, you name it and I’m scared of it.”

“Is this because of-”

Toni squeezed Cheryl’s hands. “Let me finish.” 

The redhead had the mind to look ashamed before letting Toni continue. 

“I have never known stable love in my life, except from the three friends I have who are also rather unstable. Jughead is an insomniac book writing lunatic, Sweet Pea is  _ rather  _ sadistic sometimes, and while Fangs is seemingly alright every once in a while I see him slip into forests and come back out looking like he committed a crime. I don’t ever bother asking what he did, that keeps me from being an accomplice and from him changing in the way I view him. But… no one I love is stable,  _ I  _ have never been stable. My uncle’s a  fucking alcoholic with a gang on his back ready to pounce anyone he snaps his fingers at, and even though I no longer have to have  _ any  _ association with him somehow he keeps coming right back. I don’t even bother trying to talk him out of it anymore, it always ends in me getting hurt.” 

Cheryl hadn’t noticed Toni’s hands getting tighter around her own until blunt nails were making deep crescent shapes into alabaster skin.

She pulled her hands away like Cheryl was on fire.

“I-I’m sorry-”

“No it’s alright,” Cheryl assured, her heart aching for the woman in front of her. “Why didn’t you just tell me this two days ago? It could’ve saved the both of a hell of a lot of trouble.”

Toni giggled, a rough sound dredging itself up from the depths of whatever black hole she had found herself in mere moments ago. 

Cheryl was glad to have her back.

“I do stupid things when I get nervous,” she apologetically spoke. “Like making the one person in this fucked universe that I care about  _ hate  _ me for what I said.”

“I couldn’t hate you if I tried.

_ That was so sappy god kill me,  _ Cheryl fussed quietly.

“I missed you, Cheryl. I’ve known you for barely a week and sometimes I feel like I  _ need  _ to talk to you to get through the day. It’s absurd,” Toni spoke absent mindedly, more to herself than anyone else. 

Her heart fluttered in her chest. To hear Toni say those things was like taking a shot from an epipen after an allergic reaction. 

“I missed you too.” 

The golden  pallor of the sun right outside the window high rising right in front of the couch cast an angelic glow over Toni as they gazed at each other in that moment, Cheryl drinking in everything that the girl was offering her. She bore striking resemblance to Heather, vividly so, and the redhead blushed to think that perhaps she had a type. 

Or what Cheryl could imagine Heather would look like at this age anyways.

What had happened in the past lay buried dormant under the chestnut locks of the underside of Cheryl’s otherwise crimson hair. She fought to forget, to divulge the details from her mind, to purge them like she remembered doing once in high school to stop her mom from fat shaming her.

The fat shaming had been a quirky little hobby Penelope had picked up during Cheryl’s teen years, forcing her to remember that beauty was in the bones and no one could see those bones if Cheryl  _ ate all day.  _

“So would you care to explain to me why Betty had called to ask me to take care of you in the first place?” Toni asked quirking an eyebrow.

Cheryl took a moment to come back from her thoughts, swallowing away the painful memories like weight loss pills.

“It just so happens that Betty gets rather antsy when I act anything short of robotic,” Cheryl rolled her eyes, earning another laugh from Toni. “Me taking a day off because  _ human  _ things was just a bit shocking for her.”

Toni smiled softly and reached over, tucking a lock of Cheryl’s hair behind her ear. 

“That’s because you’re too ethereal to be human.” 

It was spoken so low, so gravelly, that Cheryl could not bear the thought of never listening to Toni speak to her in that tone ever again. She wanted that in the mornings when the sun had just barely filtered in from dusk to dawn, she wanted that at nights when both of them were so tired that they could hardly remember their own names, she wanted that in the middle of the day when she would call Toni and ask her how she was doing. 

“You woo me too much, Topaz,” Cheryl laughed painfully, feeling her heart clench. This woman could be her  _ forever,  _ as long as Toni wanted that. As long as Toni could get over her fear.

“I’m not one for spewing compliments, so trust me you deserve it,” Toni winked, and perhaps the color on Cheryl’s cheek matched the interior of almost everything upstairs in her bedroom, her cheeks warmer than Thistlehouse in summer. 

The eighteenth century mansion devoid of any air conditioning truly was a shame of creation, Cheryl could hardly even stand to step foot in it during extreme weathers. Fear of a cold in the winter and a heat stroke in the summer kept her from ever having to go visit her mother who lived a nudist life for the most part now. 

“You’re not half bad yourself I suppose,” Cheryl grinned with a tilt of her chin upwards. 

“Hey,” Toni started, changing the subject abruptly. “You’re taking the whole day off from work today, right?” 

“Unless I have a sudden change in mood and feel an overwhelming need to go see the faineánt of the people who are employed under me…” Cheryl groaned leaning her head back and quickly calculating all the work she would have to catch up on for herself and for the slackers in her office. “I think you can count on the fact that I am a hundred percent free today. Which doesn’t happen often, so I suppose you make the most of it.”

Toni grinned and nearly  _ bounced  _ off the seat holding her hand out to a suddenly quietly excited Blossom woman.

“ _ Perfect,  _ because that was exactly what I was planning to do.”

**v.**

Now the nature of a Blossom, no matter how liberal minded and ready to mingle with all classes, was to protect and preserve oneself. 

That was the exact nature that was sent into overdrive and triggered to no end as Cheryl sat in the passenger seat of the rather attractive motorcycle that Toni drove like a pro. 

Her arms were wound around the torso of the smaller woman, clinging for her life as if they both wouldn’t go down if something were to happen. Although Cheryl knew Toni probably didn’t mind, she made sure to loosen her grip every few minutes to make sure the girl could breathe. 

The wind whistled in her ears, probably singing some romantic tune as they neared the edge of the Southside. And by god, Cheryl had to admit, the Southside was  _ gorgeous  _ outside the decrepit land of a town that could’ve been the hub of Riverdale. It could’ve been a commercialized area, something that Cheryl  _ knew  _ Riverdale needed so badly to keep up their economy, being as she was one of the leaders of the free market through Riverdale and the rest of New York.

By the time Toni rolled to a stop, Cheryl’s mind was swimming with ideas on how to revamp this side of Riverdale. 

“What’s going on in that pretty little head of yours?” Toni asked, parking the bike in front of their destination.

Cheryl sighed and moved to let go of Toni regretfully, only to be met by the shorter girl leaning into her touch and cradling her hands under soft calloused palms. Their bodies moulded together on the bike, each curve fitting into the dip of the other woman and vice versa.

Cheryl could safely say she had never felt more content in a long time than in that moment. 

_ Since the barn incident.  _

She shook it off. 

“I’m just thinking,” Cheryl sighed, looking at the broken beauty around her. “How much of it can be salvaged and how gorgeous it could be if it is.”

Toni cocked her head to the side to turn back and look at Cheryl just under her jaw.

“Why change this beauty by bringing in the outside world?” Toni asked, her fingers rubbing back and forth into Cheryl’s hand. 

“Not  _ change  _ per say, just commercialize it,” Cheryl looked at the wreckage of the homes around them. “Look at these rickety buildings, bones but no flesh, imagine how good they would look with actual life in them!” Her eyes wandered far and wide, looking at everything as she felt her heart race. “And god if I could get some companies down here and fix them right up, god the  _ life!  _ I could make that building in the corner a pub because  _ of course,  _ and then the building a few blocks down- do you see it?- I would make  _ that  _ a little motel or hotel for residents to stay in overnight because it can get a little crazy in this cute little town and-”

Cheryl looked down, ready to explain in more depth, only to feel her breath catch in her throat at the sight of Toni looking right back up at her. 

There was nothing but  _ adoration  _ in her cesspools of brown, a smile that only slightly parted her lips made Toni look like she was surprised but pleasantly so, as Cheryl bashfully discontinued her sentence and looked down at their bodies. 

“I’m sorry I know me getting  _ too  _ passionate about things like that can get annoying-”

“No, Cheryl,” Toni’s eyebrows knit together. “God  _ no  _ that was honestly one of your most attractive moments,” she admitted with an embarrassed giggle before moving off the bike and separating their bodies.

Cheryl shivered against the new found dip in temperature on her exposed self.

“You… you really think so?” the redhead asked, rather miffed. 

Her mother had always told her that the things that made her stand out were the things that made her undesirable. The only way to stick out in a crowd was to keep her voice loud, her chin high, and her dollars on display, but  _ never  _ to flaunt her talents like they were more than anyone else. Penelope had been strict on that rule, especially considering all of Cheryl’s  _ talents  _ back in high school seemed to be more recreational before she got into the business side of it.

Jason had never been forced and imposed to the same rules, whether her brother wanted to play a muddy game of football with his friends in the backyard while it rained or whether he wanted to paint a mural onto the ceiling of his room, their parents never told him  _ no. _

“Why wouldn’t I?” Toni shrugged, looking just as confused as the girl still sitting on the bike. “Cheryl,  _ that  _ thing that you just did? The caring about things aside from the money, the whole  _ I want this town to be beautiful because of its potential  _ rather than the money it would bring you, that is so insanely attractive,” Toni leaned in and cupped Cheryl’s face between her hands. “Empathy, caring, and wanting to better the world are all  _ very  _ attractive traits. Trust me, I almost fucked a girl once just because she was an environmentalist.”

Cheryl’s softened stance solidified as she gagged and Toni boisterously laughed at the end. 

“Thank you but  _ please  _ spare me the gruesome details of your pasts conquests while in the presence of your present one,” Cheryl rolled her eyes.

“Hey,” Toni pouted, leaning up and looking deeply into hidden eyes. “You’re more than just a conquest to me. I mean  _ yeah  _ it started out as me looking for a good fuck I guess, but you mean more to me now. I wouldn’t just  _ leave  _ you like I did them.”

Cheryl hid the trilling of a lie detector in the back of her pessimistic mind.

“You have in the past,” she mumbled quietly.

Toni had the sensibility to look guilty.

“I know babe, and I’m  _ sorry,  _ I will never not be sorry about everything that I’ve done to you in the past. But you have to believe me when I say that I would let Sweet Pea take a swing at my neck before I do something like that again,” Toni apologized. 

“I know,” Cheryl whispered, shaking her head and resting their foreheads together. “I know, Toni. _I trust you_.”

The girl tensed ever so slightly, but Cheryl didn’t freak, she knew what she had said. She just had to hold on a little tighter. 

“Cheryl…”

“You don’t have to say it back. I don’t expect you to feel that way after everything you've been through either, I just want you to know how  _ I  _ feel,” Cheryl admitted, feeling awfully naive and young once more. 

Like she was thirteen years old sitting on her bed, hidden under the covers as she whispered false promises to Heather as if they would see another tomorrow together, as if Heather would not become the taboo subject in Cheryl’s life that no one ever talked to her about ever again. 

She blinked once, twice, and the memories faded. 

She had to be here, in this moment, where she told Toni that she  _ trusts  _ her. Something she hadn’t done  _ ever. _

“I- I don’t-” Toni stuttered quietly eyes darting between Cheryl’s. 

“You’re okay,” Cheryl whispered, rubbing up and down Toni’s back. “Everything’s  _ alright.”  _

She felt Toni suck in a deep breath against her chest. 

“It is,” their eyes locked once more. “I think you’re right Blossom, everything’s alright.”

Their mouths inched together. 

“When am I not right?” 

Two smiles met in the middle lighting up and giving life to an area so devoid of it, filtering it with Cheryl’s ambition, her goals, and Toni’s strength, her resilience, and her  _ belief.  _

**_Forgiving. Forgetting. Accepting._ **

 


	8. Fancy A Spliff?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there everyone: a quick disclaimer that there is drug use in this chapter!! 
> 
> But aside from that, the action is starting to pick up and so I do have to say that there will be a few touchy elements added as we go, such as light violence and gang warfare kind of stuff, but also!! I am not forgetting that Toni is a stripper and she does have that side job so there will be mature elements like some BDSM sex type stuff. 
> 
> Those of you who were worried that Cheryl trusted Toni took quick in the last chapter- don't fret I am well aware that it's way too early for her to be saying that kind of stuff, but here's my thought behind that: Cheryl hasn't known deep intimate romantic love very much since Heather, so if you look at it from her point of view, these strong feelings that she has for Toni can be misinterpreted as something stronger than they actually are and she'll be willing to take larger and longer steps in order to preserve their relationship. Whereas Toni, who has suffered this emotional abuse for so long as well as Cheryl, has a different way of coping with her relationships and she's more likely to be more reserved about who she trusts. I promise you guys I have not forgotten to go slow and I am not rushing anything, I'm just trying to do the characters justice as per how they would act in real life. 
> 
> So that's that, enjoy :)

**i.**

If Toni had been  _ aware  _ of what could’ve happened that night, if only she had listened when Sweet Pea and Fangs had told her that her uncle had been MIA all last night-

_ Maybe she could have avoided this.  _

Maybe Toni wouldn’t be bound and gagged, strapped to a wooden chair that she could snap as easy someone’s neck- except she couldn’t. If she were to risk trying to break out of the chair, she would have to fight five armed guards by the door, all carrying guns and pounds of muscle. 

“You’re quite the sight,” one of the guards muttered in a loosely veiled attempt to be seductive. 

Toni would’ve cussed his goddamn ear off if she wasn’t gagged. 

_ Fucker,  _ she cursed in her head.

“Leave her alone, Tucker, you know the consequences from the boss man if you get to her before he does,” another shrouded figure boredly commented, placing his hand on the bullet proof chest of an advancing guard. 

The man who had tried to seduce her with his  _ assholery _ . 

“So what, we can’t even have a little  _ fun?” _ The man,  _ Tucker,  _ practically whined. 

“He said  _ hands off,  _ Tuck, and I am not risking getting my fucking head blown off because you can’t keep it in your pants for four seconds,” the other guard barked, sending Tucker back to his position with his tail between his legs. 

Toni grinned behind the damp towel shoved in her mouth. Her tongue was aching and her wrists were sore, but at least she could be saved the humiliation of being forced into something she would never recover from. 

_ Oh but-  _ she didn’t mean rape. 

She meant having to bite that fucking  _ prick’s dick off. _

She wiggled her tongue behind the moist material, catching dews and drops of water on the strong pink muscle, hoping it would be enough for now to appease her thirst. 

**_Thirst_ ** _.  _

Toni was in the middle of exploring  _ that  _ feeling right when a bunch of guards draped in unusually expensive black gear had bust down the rickety door that led to the roof of the building she and Cheryl had been lounging on together. 

_ Cheryl.  _

Toni’s eyes fluttered open and a whimper struggled around the gag.

Cheryl, god where had they taken her? 

Toni had been with her right up until they arrived at the warehouse and Cheryl had  been dragged away despite Toni’s growling protests. They had taken her by her  _ beautiful sanguine hair  _ and yanked her into a room, thrusting a syringe into Toni’s neck at the same time the white towel wrapped around her mouth. 

“ _ Mmfph,”  _ Toni groaned, attempting to gather the attention of  _ someone.  _

But there was nothing, none of the five even flinched at the noise. Like they had been expecting her to put up a fight anyways. Toni was going way too easy on them. She moaned again, louder, more in pain, and out of the corner of her eye, one of them twitched.

_ Tucker.  _

Toni trained her eyes on him, squinting to look farther, past the dim lighting of the single light that fell upon her from high up in the rafters of the warehouse. She could just barely make out the glint of blonde hair and a strong jaw, and under any other circumstance, maybe Toni would’ve found him attractive. But he had already opened his mouth unfortunately, and the situation they were in permitted her from feeling anything but malice. 

She garbled behind the gag again, training all her focus on him, and she caught his eye.

Tucker, yes, a weak man, driven by his genitals rather than his mind and heart. A perfect catch for Toni, she was not new to this business, she had been a Serpent for her whole life

Toni had charmed her way out of dangerous situations before, and she would do it again. 

“ _ Mmph,” _ Toni tried again.

“Come on man, can’t we untie her for a little, give her some water or something?” Tucker caved.

The guard beside him, stocky and a face built like the Grinch, huffed in annoyance. 

“Not until they’re done with the Blossom bitch.”

_ Blossom bitch,  _ Toni’s insides were on fire. How  _ dare  _ they-

She growled low in her throat and took advantage of their momentary lapse in judgement for not tying her feet together and stood up, slamming back down quickly and breaking the chair into splinters as the ties fell away from her body and chaos broke out.

Toni removed the gag from her mouth, practically coughing it onto the floor with assistance from her hands, as she darted around the panicked guards who seemed to have forgotten how to do their job.

Some fucking team her uncle had. 

_ Cheryl she had to get to  _ **_Cheryl,_ ** Toni realized with a desperation as she broke out into a sprint, running as hard and fast as she could towards the door behind which her woman was.

She could get there, she  _ could-  _

_ Only  _ **_five_ ** _ big strides-  _

**_four-_ **

**_three-_ **

**_two-_ **

Toni twisted the handle and managed to shove the door open with her shoulder, throttling herself into the frame, and fell to the floor with a loud clatter.

Only to look up and find the disappointed but not surprised face of her uncle looking down at her, across from him, Cheryl was bound to a far sturdier chair in the same fashion Toni had been minus the gag. Tears streamed down her face, beautifully done mascara now running down her alabaster cheeks, her eyes wide with fear, realization,  _ adoration,  _ as she looked down at the small and sturdy body of her Serpent girl. 

“ _ Cheryl-” _

Toni barely got a word out before the air was knocked out of her lungs and her head clashed painfully against the floor, the body of a guard falling on top of her.

“Get  _ off of her!”  _ Cheryl screamed finally, her voice hoarse, and Toni twinged. 

She hated that they had roughed Cheryl up, the enchanting Blossom who lived in embroidered pillow and blankets shipped from France, the woman who had never seen anything less than a hundred dollar bill. 

“No can do, princess, sorry,” John finally spoke up, making Toni seethe with rage at  _ her  _ pet name for Cheryl. “She’s going to have to go, Mason please get her out of here, drug her if you have to,” John waved dismissively as he met Toni’s enraged glare. “Don’t want her interrupting my  _ private show  _ with Miss Blossom again.” 

Toni’s eyes widened in panic and she looked back at Cheryl, if he  _ hurt  _ her-

Hazel eyes looked back and Toni watched as Cheryl gave her a subtle shake of her head. 

Her lungs released.

Not for long though, as she felt rough hands thread through her pink hair and yank her up off the ground, rising to her feet with as much dignity as a fallen warrior could.

“Don’t you fucking  _ touch _ her John, I mean it,” Toni hissed, struggling valiantly against the stronghold of the stoic man behind her.  _ Mason.  _

John’s eyes softened into pseudo sympathy as he frowned mockingly, his body loose and lanky like he was imitating a super villain from a comic book. Languidly hopping around with his wrist limp and a knife dangling from between his long fingers. 

“And what would you do if I  _ did,  _ hm Toni?” John spoke down, condescending her. 

“Threaten me again, John, and I’ll make sure Sweets, Fangs, and I  _ rip  _ you-”

Jonathan rolled his eyes, turning away in a two-step jig.

“Enough with the theatrics, Antoinette. We both know you and your bandwagon of  _ children  _ could never compete with me,” he laughed.

Toni growled. 

“Hm, cute. Mason, what is she still doing here?” 

The man behind her huffed and tightened the grip on her hair, the cold press of a needle biting at the side of her neck.

_ Shit. _

Toni glanced quickly at Cheryl’s whose eyes were wide with fear and confusion, struggling feebly against cable ties that made welts in her skin. 

“It’s okay,” Toni mouthed, smiling gently at the redhead. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”

And the last thing she saw before being sent under again was the masked panic in Cheryl’s eyes upon seeing her lover go limp, eyes rolling to the back of her head as the drug entered her bloodstream.

**ii.**

_ Toni didn’t believe she had ever seen a sight more beautiful in her life.  _

_ She had brought Cheryl up to the roof of the highest building in the Southside, a good few stories higher than the tallest one in the North, looking out over the New York skyline; something that Toni had never been fortunate enough herself to go see in person.  _

_ The beautiful sight wasn’t the skyline though. _

_ “This is… wow,” Cheryl’s usually articulate self dismantled, gazing out to the hum of life just barely audible from where they were standing.  _

_ “I know,” Toni agreed with a quiet sigh. “I used to come up here all the time with Fangs and Sweet Pea, when we were little. They used it as a sanctuary to take me to when things at home got… difficult.” _

_ “That happens a lot, huh?” Cheryl whispered, looking back, away from the beauty.  _

_ Toni quieted down, thinking back. Her and the boys had a lot of memories on this roof, from bringing her there the first day after they had stumbled across it on a raid and decided it would be their  _ **_place,_ ** _ to sprinting there in the dead of night after a particularly difficult session of beatings with her uncle. It was kind of like her own personal sanctuary, a heaven in the hell, a safe haven where Toni knew she could trust her body to be protected.   _

_ “Not anymore,” Toni shrugged.“Now I can go to a bar or some place far, or your house too I guess.” _

_ “Always,” Cheryl smiled wistfully. _

_ Toni glanced quickly at Cheryl, motioning with her hands to wait, as she disappeared into an alcove beneath the woodworks.  _

_ Down there was stashed wrapper after wrapper full of candies, freshly stocked every Friday by Sweet Pea and Fangs while she was out doing her work st the Velvet Cabaret. _

_ Despite the fact that they didn’t come up here together much anymore, the place was always readied to the T. Just in case a situation befell them, and Toni thanked the lord that her boys took such good care of the place or Cheryl would be entering a dump. _

_ Toni reached down and scooped some chocolate bars into her hand, studying over them, wondering if it would be authentic enough for Cheryl.  _

_ They came from two very different worlds, Cheryl ate gourmet meals even for snacks, and yet Toni’s entire food group was cheap junk food or the occasional fair priced fruit. It made her reconsider everything for a minute, how could two people who ever ever lived on the same plane of society before, be so compatible as to be in a relationship together?  _

_ And yet when Toni poked her head out of the top of the alcove and looked at Cheryl still marveling in the basking sun and looking at the skyline, she felt her heart warm.  _

_ This was the woman who had seen just as much hardship in her past life as Toni had, the woman who could never seem to quite shake the sadness from her eyes, and while Toni wanted nothing more than for Cheryl to be happy, she was glad they had something in common. Even if it had to be the most undesirable one.   _

_ Toni shook the thoughts from her head as she wriggled her fingers further in the groove of the alcove and found a small tin box. _

**_Bingo._ **

_ “Hey Cherry?” Toni called, popping out with candies in one hand and the mysterious tin box in the other.  _

_ “Hm?” Cheryl hummed, turning to look at the girl with a serene smile.  _

_ “You fancy a spliff?” _

_ “Do I _ fancy a spliff?”  _ Cheryl asked with a laugh, quirking an eyebrow. “Listen, I like my fair share of proper sentences but… since when do we live in England?”  _

_ Toni shook her head with a smile, cursing herself.  _

_ “It sounded better and fancier in my head.” _

_ The two girls shared a wistful and secret smile as Toni pulled down blankets from the top of an aluminum roof, patched together as a shield from rain by a young Serpent trio, and spread it across the cold concrete of the rooftop. _

_ They moved into their respective spots, curling together instinctively as the sun wafted, being covered by moving whipped cream clouds every so often. _

_ “It’s nice up here,” Cheryl said, taking a drag from the joint rolled between her fingers courtesy of Toni. _

_ “The only place on earth I ever knew as home when my uncle took it upon himself to make my body his personal canvas of gruesome artwork,” Toni wistfully commented, blowing smoke into the atmosphere.  _

_ Cheryl looked down at her hand fiddling with the white lit substance, drugs pouring out from the inside. Toni watched in delight as dainty fingers maneuvered the joint slightly, wondering in the back of her mind what other things those fingers could do.  _

_ “I’d ask you about how you live here,” Cheryl spoke slowly, selecting her words carefully. “But I think I want more from this evening than just that.” _

_ “What, you want a cheeky little makeout sesh?” _

_ “Don’t be crass, Antoinette,” Cheryl rolled her eyes., and on anyone else, Toni would’ve snapped at them and told them to keep their fucking mouths shut. She knew too much about how that name sounded on John’s lips to be able to handle hearing it from someone else.  _

_ “No really,” Toni deadpanned, looking down seductively at Cheryl’s blood red lips. _ _ She was unrelenting though, giving Toni an unimpressed look. _

_ “Fine, what else would you like to talk about then?” Toni asked, pulling the spliff to her mouth and taking a long drag.  _

_ Cheryl watched her, eyes hot and trained on the Serpent’s pink mouth before responding.  _

_ “What did you major in? In college I mean.” _

_ “Oh really? So you don’t mean my strip dancing major at the Velvet Cabaret?” Toni teased, letting the joint dangle from between her lips as smoke poured out the open corners.  _

_ Cheryl gave her a pointed look.  _

_ “Okay, okay,” Toni caved with a laugh, pulling the white wrap out from between her lips and blowing the smoke gently into the air, controlling her breathing. “I did a biochem double major. I wanted to be a doctor. I never got the chance to do my post grad work though.” _

_ “Why?” Cheryl probed.  _

_ “Why does anyone ever stop doing something they love, Cheryl?” Toni asked, licking her chapped lips. “I don’t expect you to understand, you were born into riches, but for us  _ normal  _ people, when money gets tight we have to give some things up sometimes.”  _

_ Cheryl looked rather ashamed of herself in the moment and Toni felt bad for making her embarrassed over something she hadn’t controlled. She was never snotty about her fortune, yes she flaunted it on her body with every pricey designer piece to adorn her beauty, but never had she made Toni feel bad about her poverty for the sake of being classist.  _

_ “But I guess it wasn’t a waste,” Toni shared with a depressing note of solemnity. “The doctor dream was just that… a dream.” _

_ “Don’t say that,” Cheryl pouted. “I’m sure you would’ve been cherished in any field of medicine you chose. You would be really good at it too, I know it. I see it in you.” _

_ “You think anyone would take me for work in  _ any  _ hospital literally anywhere, Cheryl?” Toni sighed, flicking the embers away from herself and watching them fly into the air. “My entire history is of rough gang problems, hitting people left and right, a few eviction notices and no stable family life. You really think they’d let me around sick or dying people thinking that I could possibly be a threat to them much less heal them?” _

_ Cheryl bit down on her bottom lip and huffed, puffing her breath and Toni marveled in the way she could see wisps of where the air went aided by gray smoke. _

_ “That’s highly unfair and utterly preposterous I think,” Cheryl shook her head. “Your personal life is no judge for your professional one.” _

_ “Isn’t it though?” Toni questioned. “I can’t even enter a room without everyone judging me with a thousand thoughts when they see my tattoos or serpent jacket. It would be ludicrous to think that they wouldn’t do the same when I have to handle literal people’s lives.” _

_ “You’re doing God’s work by saving those people, I just didn't think they would have the gall to judge you on your looks beforehand,” Cheryl sighed. _

_ “That’s the world for ya,” Toni shrugged.  _

_ Cheryl looked at her like she had grown another head. _

_ “It’s not supposed to be like that,” Cheryl whispered, despondency radiating from each word. “People are supposed to be happy, free to be who they are however they want to be. Judging because of tattoos? Sexual orientation? I mean,  _ racism?  _ Literally what is all that bullshit?”  _

_ Toni smiled softly at the woman who seemed to be her very own Mother Teresa… if Mother Teresa was into drugs and strip clubs. _

_ Or if she was a lesbian. _

_ “Enough about me,” Toni took a drag. “Tell me, Cheryl, when did you start doing drugs?”  _

_ This reddened the patented color girls cheeks as she looked down at the burning nub of her joint. Toni wondered what she was thinking in that moment, was it the drugs or was it Toni? Was it something else entirely? Did she trust Toni enough to tell her her honest thoughts in that moment if the girl asked for them? _

_ She supposed she would never know. _

_ “Start of high school,” Cheryl shrugged like she was relaying common information. “Freshman year, I had just gotten through some… dark stuff, and I was hellbent on spiteing my molerat of a mother. This kid, you know Reggie Mantle, he dealt me the stuff. Mainly jingle jangle, in small quantities, never enough to make me incoherent but enough to give me the liquid courage I needed without actually having to ingest alcohol.” _

_ “Fucking Reggie,” Toni rolled her eyes, letting the smoke settle in her chest as her eyes watered. _

_ Cheryl giggled.  _

_ “He was worse back then, in his prime. I mean, once a dick always a dick, but he tried to hit on every single girl in the goddamn school, even  _ me  _ when I finally came out,” Cheryl nodded, thinking back on times that Toni regretfully realized she would never be a part of. She could never be a part of Cheryl’s past no matter how badly she wanted to, she would only be a present participle of her life, which was better than a future of never she supposed.  _

_ “Reggie’s fucking vile, Cheryl,” Toni scoffed. “One of the worst people I know, and I know my fucking uncle.” _

_ The redhead smiled sadly and Toni wanted to yell at her for that look of pity, she didn’t need pity, she could rough up an entire neighborhood of people with just her knuckles. Except Cheryl was the only good thing in her life and Toni would be damned before she let it slip through her fingers like this again because of her short temper. _

_ “Whatever he is, was, will always be, he gave me the things that helped me get through that first year without the walls closing in on me and keeping me from reaching the next grade,” she smokily explained, getting lost in the fog of her own drugs. _

_ “That bad, huh?” _

_ “Horrific,” Cheryl confirmed. _

_ Toni took a moment to slowly inhale, not caring whatsoever about the health of her lungs in that moment. It had been a long time since she had popped up here for a smoke, she just wanted to enjoy it with the world’s most beautiful girl by her side. _

_ “It probably isn’t more horrific than Freddie’s death in  _ Skins  _ though,” Toni thought with a quick breath. _

_ Cheryl narrowed her eyes and turned to look at Toni.  _

_ “You… watched  _ Skins?” 

_ “I started from volume three just for the lesbians don’t be fooled, I’m no prime fan, but I did fucking barrel through volumes three, four, and seven,” Toni cleared with a smirk. “Best cast and year by far.” _

_ “I do have to agree with you on that,” Cheryl nodded, tilting her blunt in the direction of Toni. “Freddie’s death was one of the most traumatizing for me, because all he had ever tried to do was love and protect Effy, he literally  _ died  _ trying to do that… and to top it all off he lost his life in the most brutal way possible.” _

_ “I really wasn’t all that interested in the hetero relationships but I remember hurting for days on end over Freddie’s death. That shit tore me up,” Toni admitted. “But Naomi…” _

_ Cheryl lifted her free hand in a quick slicing motion.  _

_ “Fuck off with that unless you want me to start bawling on the spot.” _

_ “Fair enough,” Toni smiled, lightly cheersing their blunts together before taking another long drag. “Would you do what she did though? Hide something for the sake of both of your sanities?” _

_ Cheryl thought long and hard, and for the first time Toni saw the remnants of a younger, far broken girl, pop through the cracks of her facade. _

_ “Yeah,” Cheryl finally finished, fishing her thoughts from whatever depth she had drowned to. “I certainly would. As long as I can forget for the both of us, it would be more than enough.” _

_ Toni flicked the blunt out of her finger tips and watched it fall over the edge of the roof before moving to straddle a shocked Cheryl’s lap.  _

_ “So what are you hiding, Cherry? What is it that you’re keeping hidden for both of our sakes?” _

_ The redhead’s breath caught in her throat as her hands rested on Toni’s waist, the joint still dangling from her between her fingers. Toni could see the visible struggle in her eyes between focusing on the fact that the stripper was sitting in her lap and answering to her farthest extent what the girl had just asked her. _

_ “I- I’m not-” _

_ “Don’t lie to me.” _

_ “It’s hard to focus when you’re this close,” Cheryl admitted shyly.  _

_ “I’m sure you’ve had pretty girls this close before,” Toni teased with a grin, tracing her finger down Cheryl’s torso.  _

_ “Yeah but you’re the prettiest,” Cheryl softly commented, rubbing circles with her thumbs into Toni’s hips. “That makes for uncharted territory and more anxiety, if I’m being honest.” _

_ “Be a little more honest,” Toni coaxed.  _

_ Cheryl took a deep breath.  _

_ “This is dangerous, TT.” _

_ “Mhm yeah but nothing I haven’t handled before,” Toni pointed out. “I’m a gang member remember? I like… kill people on the daily.” _

_ “Oh very convincing, Topaz,” Cheryl rolled her eyes before looking away anxiously. “The reason I wasn’t at work this morning-” she started, only to be interrupted rather rudely by the banging open of a flimsy door from where they had entered. _

_ “Ant! There you are, I’ve been dying to see you… and your new girl of course,” Jonathan fucking Topaz stood, grinning from the doorway, man after man backing him up in black bodysuits. _

_ What kind of harm did he think one Toni Topaz could inflict on him that he had to bring that much defense? _

_ It made her smile despite herself. _

_ “John,” Toni growled, quickly moving off of Cheryl and in front of her. “How the fuck did you find us?”  _

_ He gave a lanky lopsided grin, pulling his left hand level with everyone’s faces, a burnt out spliff between his fingers, examining it closely. _

_ “Saw this fall from the top of the building and I thought, ‘my, my, what a violation of environmental protocols’. Something  _ you  _ taught me, niece dearest,” he mocked. _

_ “There is no way you saw a fucking blunt on the ground and thought of  _ me,  _ John,” Toni rolled her eyes, feeling Cheryl stiffen impossibly behind her.  _

_ “Miss Blossom, we meet again?” John finally addressed Cheryl, ignoring Toni’s last comment. _

_ “I- I don’t know what you’re talking about-” _

_ “Oh come now baby don’t play dumb,” John leered, licking his lips as Toni watched with rising rage as he looked her up and down.  _

_ “Don’t you fucking look at her, John, I swear-” _

_ “Or  _ what?  _ Toni? You’ll kill me? My men will put you out of your misery if you even try,” he snickered. Toni bristled at the clear disadvantage she had, she wanted to sock him between the eyes for it.  _

_ “Cheryl what’s he talking about?” Toni asked, not chancing a look at the beauty for fear of being jumped.  _

_ “Toni-” _

_ “It was me, in her house this morning,” John smiled. _

_ “In her house… Cheryl what?” Toni finally addressed, feeling too much like she was missing a piece of the story. _

_ How that even happened she had no idea, Cheryl was  _ her _ girl, John was  _ her  _ uncle, how did she get left out of the narrative then? _

_ “I was just about to tell you, Toni,” Cheryl whispered. “The reason I wasn’t at work today was because someone had broken into my house… I guess it’s him.” _

_ Her muscles tightened and her body went rigid with a frost of the night before the first snow of the year.  _

_ “You little dipshit,” Toni growled making a move to walk forward, and all of the men behind John shuffled. Her heart raced. “Down, dogs,” Toni rolled her eyes.  _

_ John raised an eyebrow before nodding his head dubiously at his men. _

_ Toni almost breathed a sigh of relief when they took a step back. _

_ “Listen, Toni, all I ask of is for some charity from your Blossom girlfriend,” John waved his hands. “Some money to keep my mouth shut I guess.”  _

_ “Keep your mouth shut about fucking  _ what,  _ dick?” Toni peered. What the hell was she missing? _

_ John failed to answer, just looking behind Toni, at the one woman who was about to flip her entire world upside down. If she already hadn’t, of course.  _

_ “She knows what I’m talking about, Toni, no need for discourse over it, eh, Miss Blossom?” John sneered.  _

_ “Please stop,” Cheryl practically begged, and this time Toni turned around, looking over the girl’s features and realizing there was more than just the fear of a man who had broken into her house. It was more, there was always something more with her, and Toni felt at a loss for words or emotions. How was she supposed to feel about this? Was there some booklet or guide to tell her how to feel when she was kept in the dark by everyone?  _

_ “What is going on?” Toni whispered, distraught.  _

_ “Alright, I’m guessing you won’t comply then,” John grumbled, sounding bored.  _

_ Toni barely had the chance to open her mouth and protest before black suits surrounded her a scream circled in her throat, crowding her thoughts and voice. There were hands everywhere, grabbing her, practically groping her, as they lifted Toni off the ground and moved to evacuate. _

_ “Let go of me!” Toni yelled, struggling valiantly in the grip of five heavily armed men. “Fucking… let. Go. Of. Me!” She thrust and cant her legs in every direction with each emphasized word to no avail. _

_ And then Cheryl screamed. _

_ “Cheryl!” Toni got out before being gagged and everything drowned out.  _

_ She could taste the thin traces of chloroform in the threadbare material of the gag, it invaded her nostrils, and though it failed to properly knock her out, Toni could already feel her consciousness slipping. _

_ All she could see from there forward we’re gimmicks of light, little spurts of exaggerated movement, and if she tried hard enough, she could focus on a panicked Cheryl’s voice.  _

_ Her thoughts jumbled together into bursts and strings of conscious streams, she wondered how Cheryl knew her uncle for something that seemed to be more than just a breaking and entering, she wondered when Cheryl was planning on telling her  _ that,  _ she wondered why she could never just be enough for anyone.  _

_ Other than that, it was dark, before she felt the syringe in the side of her neck and it was lights out for good.  _ ****  
  
  



	9. All I Wanted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of angst, I do apologize, and sorry for the long wait, I just had a sort of writers block with this chapter but Ive finally churned it out, so here you go, enjoy!

**i.**

Cheryl had never known anything but pure lavish comfort her whole life, she always ran the risk of sounding snobbish when she admitted that, even to herself, but it was the truth.

So when John Topaz dragged her from what could very legitimately be called a holding cell, and threw her down on cold cement with one precarious source of light coming from a flickering light bulb above her head and dark corners stretching for god knows how long, Cheryl felt a sense of dread creep up on her.

 _John Topaz,_ she thought, feeling her walls close in on her again.

Cheryl could’ve been piss drunk with no coherency in sight and she could spot that man from a mile away, and she wasn’t saying that because of his spot on knock off characteristics of every villain in a Disney movie ever. Cheryl _knew_ him, in a way that no person should ever have to know another.

Bile lapped at the base of her throat she shoved the memories back down to where they came from. She would go broke if she ever had to relive that night again, that one night which changed her for the rest of her life; dooming her to never be the same Cheryl who was able to love so openly once.

She hugged her knees tight to her chest and rocked back and forth, acutely aware of the whirring camera in the far corner of the room.

She just had to get out of here.

She had to _run._

Like her life depended on it.

It probably did.

That idea scared Cheryl to her core, for a girl who had once been suicidal in her life, who had almost faced the close kiss of death, she never wanted to be there again unless her time came; and she knew for a fact that a Blossom would never die so young.

Not unless they were murdered, and like hell was Cheryl going to give into _that._

Her hand scampered shakily along the uneven cement floor of the icy room, searching for something, anything, hoping it would give away to light and she could kick her way out.

But this was no movie, she was no Angelina Jolie in _Salt,_ she could not simply kick down an imaginary door in the wall with spy tech, she was just Cheryl Blossom, who up until a few hours ago was on a peaceful date with her girlfriend _(could she even call her that?)_ on a rooftop.

_Toni._

Cheryl shivered and  stilled.

She wondered what horrors they would be concocting for her, it might’ve been Cheryl they were after, but she knew of the terrible person that John Topaz was.

And now that she had seen his face, she knew more about him than Toni had ever bargained to tell her. In fact, Cheryl knew more about him than Toni did.

Her hand trembled over the cold stone floor and willed away the anxiety that was rising in her chest like a tidal wave once more. She could not believe the audacity of herself, how could she be so weak? After so long? After so much time had passed? How could she let it get to her again?

 _You are the weakest Blossom,_ Penelope taunted in her head and Cheryl grasped the side of her forehead with a kind of motion that indicated blinding pain in her temples, when really, the pain was in her heart, in her soul, was she really the weakest Blossom then? Had her mother been right all along to tell her that she was no heir to the maple throne because she had no use being the head of the use with a brain that was spun so easily?

Her thoughts were interrupted mid simmer as the inconspicuous shadow of a door flung open for a solitary second and a lightweight petite body was dumped forth, the entrance shutting again behind her.

“Toni?” Cheryl breathed, reaching out to touch the limp body.

“Cheryl, oh my god, baby,” Toni practically whimpered, and the pull was instant.

Cheryl didn’t think twice before scrambling off her feet and throwing herself at a battered Serpent on her knees. The pink head of the girl was tucked away safely beneath her chin as she wrapped herself wholly around Toni, making sure that the girl would never get away from her like that again. The sheer worry that had enveloped her being when Toni was out cold, drugged and dragged away from her, tied down to a chair as Cheryl was sent to her own personal hell, it was debilitating.

“Are you okay? Toni mumbled into the shoulder of the taller girl.

Cheryl hugged her tighter, god she had worried, she had worried so hard for the little firecracker that she was beginning to fall for. She had worried that she would never get to hear those raspy dulcet tones ever again, she had worried that there would be no tomorrow for them when they were just beginning to learn about yesterday.

“I’m fine, are you?” Cheryl probed, pulling away and peering down into earthen eyes.

“I’m good now that I know you’re okay,” Toni replied bashfully, flashing that boyish grin that Cheryl adored so much.

“Really? You’re flirting even in this dire situation?”

“I know there’s a time and place for everything but I don’t really know how much time I have left-”

“ _No,”_ Cheryl interrupted, looking down sternly at Toni. “Why would you say something like that? You’re young, fit, healthy, why the hell would you not have any time left?” Cheryl’s eyes widened as she began to grope around Toni’s body urgently. “He hasn’t hurt you, has he? I’ll fucking _kill-”_

Toni laughed softly, touching over Cheryl’s hands and shaking her head.

“No love, he hasn’t hurt me, _yet_ anyways.”

“Then why-”

“I’m sure you’ve deduced that this isn’t any normal family gathering, Cheryl,” Toni pointed out somberly.

“Well… no,” she drawled. “I know he’s not the greatest uncle in the world, but if you’re implying that he’d be willing to _kill_ you-”

“That’s actually _exactly_ what I’m saying,” Toni shrugged, rubbing the back of her neck. “I heard them talking, Cher, when John thought I was still knocked out. They… they were talking about holding me for ransom, that they would charge you a large sum of money in exchange for my safety. If you failed to comply well… it’s off with my head,” Toni shrugged, toying with the Serpent ring on her index finger. “And I don’t know quite how much I mean to you, but- but if worst comes to worst Cheryl, protect yourself and _go._ Let me fucking die for all I care so long as you’re in the clear, he won’t bother you again if I’m dead, he’ll have nothing to bargain with.”

Cheryl winced, remembering the _incident-_

“Right?” Toni inquired, narrowing her eyes and looking at Cheryl intently.

The red haired girl remained mum.

“Cheryl… he would have _nothing to bargain with, correct?”_

“You mean more than money ever could to me,” Cheryl spoke quietly, avoiding Toni’s question, but it was clear that the Serpent would not be accepting these answers tonight, these half hearted misguided leeways that Cheryl so graciously tried to create for herself to get out of a dire situation. But she could not give in, if there was one thing Cheryl Blossom so desperately needed to do, it was to never remember that night ever again, even if that meant lying to Toni this one time

Toni lifted a thinly drawn eyebrow.

“No,” Cheryl finally breathed, not meeting Toni’s eyes as she did so. “No he wouldn’t.”

There was an air of tension for the moment, before Toni’s shoulders dropped and she slouched into Cheryl’s form, the stress seeping from her body in waves.

“I’m sorry I’m being so hard on you, I just need to know that if… if I give myself over, there will be nothing else he can use against you.”

 _“Give yourself over?”_ Cheryl asked, her eyes wide and disbelief clamoring up her throat. “You are not giving yourself to _anyone_ Toni, not if I can help it.”

There was a kind of implication in Cheryl's voice that made Toni pause.

“I- I won’t let him _rape_ me, Cher,” she spoke slowly, eyes darting between the redhead’s.

Cheryl tensed, she hadn’t meant to imply that, but it seemed that the memory she tried so hard to push down back to her subconscious where she had kept it locked for eight years began reflecting in ways that she could not control.

“I know,” she waved her hands quickly. “I _know_ that, I meant in the other way. The death way,” Cheryl saved quickly, noticing that weird look on Toni’s face but choosing to ignore it.  
  
She would not tell Toni, she could not relive that night, it would break her.

“Okay well,” the Serpent ran her fingers through her hair, lifting the locks away from her forehead, and for the first time Cheryl noticed the sweat that matted small strands of bubble gum hair to the damp skin of her temples. “We need to get out of here, before anything else. The ransom, all that bullshit, that is last resort, Cher, you hear me? We are not going down or out of here without a fight.”

For a moment, Cheryl eyed the girl who managed to look so confident in this broken room with a single dangling luminescent bulb above their heads. Perhaps Cheryl would’ve never gotten in this situation if she hadn’t become involved with Toni, she could’ve gone the rest of her life without ever being reminded of the childhood trauma she had to suffer through just because she liked girls, _a girl,_ no- she had _loved_ her.

And then something pained her in the middle of her chest.

Toni looked strikingly similar to John, not in the obvious ways, but in the more subtle details. Their strong jaws and olive skin, their chocolate eyes and the pout of their bottom lips turned downwards ever so slightly, making them the most kissable lips on earth.

She resisted the urge to gag.

It all suddenly became clear to Cheryl with blinding clarity, why she had taken notice of Toni the first time at the Velvet Cabaret. She held such striking similarity to the one man who had turned her life upside down, the masochistic side of Cheryl, the subconscious part of her that had always wanted to torture herself because of everything she had thought she had done wrong in her life, had pushed her towards the girl she knew without even _really_ knowing.

Her mind had been forcing her to finally come to terms with the trauma she had suppressed for so long

“Cheryl?” Toni called, snapping her out of her reverie. “Hey, where did you go just now?”

“None of your business,” Cheryl snapped, feeling unequivocally angry, and then feeling incredibly guilty as the soft expression fell from Toni’s face into a sadder more reserved one. “I’m sorry-”

“No it’s okay,” Toni moved away, her head bowed and eyes downcast, voice tight with Cheryl could only assume were tears. “I know I dragged you into this without your permission, you don’t deserve any of this and I totally understand if you never want to see me again when this is-”

“ _Toni,”_ Cheryl urged, pouting and reaching forward, an ocean of guilt lapping at her toes, tightening her stomach muscles. “I’m sorry honey, please don’t apologize, I didn’t mean to snap I’m just anxious.”

 _Lies,_ her mind hissed at her, but this was not Toni’s fault. Toni was a _victim,_ if anything, and like hell was Cheryl going to let her own mental block get in the way of her budding relationship.

Toni looked _fearful,_ her eyes still refusing to meet the hazel ones of her significant other, and searching for something in the darkness that they both knew wasn’t there.

“Toni _look at me,_ please?”

It was only then, upon Cheryl’s invitation, that Toni seemed to work up the courage to meet her eyes once more.

There was nothing but guilt, shame, and _doubt_ in those eyes, causing Cheryl to pull back as she assessed the situation. What was Toni guilty and ashamed about? Surely not the situation they were in? Cheryl thought she had made it abundantly clear that she didn’t blame Toni for any of what was happening. Did Toni’s doubt stem from the fact that she could tell Cheryl was lying to her?

“I’m sorry, Cheryl,” Toni finally breathed out, “I’m just so _appalled_ by what’s happening- I knew John was a bad person but I really had putting kidnapping and drugging his own niece outside the realm of possibilities for him. Yet again, he proved me wrong.”

Cheryl sighed and cupped the side of Toni’s face, rubbing her thumb back and forth over a smooth tan cheek.

“I know it’s hard baby, I _know,”_ Cheryl somberly acknowledged, realizing that Toni too was going through a hard time. It was about more than just her, she was not the only one with something to lose right now.

 _“No_ Cheryl,” Toni shook her head, retracting herself. “No you don’t know, because you’ve never had to face his wrath before, you don’t know how _cruel_ he can be.”

Cheryl winced again, but inwardly. If only Toni knew.

“Speaking of cruelty,” Toni moved away, narrowing her eyes at Cheryl but not in a threatening way. More inquisitive than anything else. “What happened in the room with you and John while I was knocked the fuck out?”

**ii.**

_Cheryl wriggled mercilessly in her chair, hoping to get something, to loosen the ties, to rock the chair a little hard so it would break accidentally. But nothing, there was nothing, other than the daunting chill of the room that clawed into her bones and the booming sound of men, only five of them, marching around outside of the room._

_“Miss Blossom…”_

_“John,” Cheryl growled, fighting the ties again, shaking her shoulders more vigorously._

_“Did you miss me?” He leered, a lewd grin on his face. “How long has it been? Let’s see… eight years? You never contacted me back after that, I really thought we could’ve been good acquaintances under different circumstances,” John pouted, sticking his hands in the pockets of his pants and rocking back and forth._

_“You will never be anything to me but a_ criminal!” _Cheryl spat, her rage boiling. She could not believe the audacity of this man._

_“Shame,” John shrugged, “I probably could’ve told you where Heather is.”_

_Cheryl froze._

_“Shut up,” she growled. “You don’t know_ shit, _you’re just bluffing.”_

_“Am I, Cheryl?” John finally sneered, his eyes coming into slits as he stood inches away from Cheryl’s face, staring down at her with a rage that seemed to congeal deftly beneath the surface. “Do you think I could be just bluffing when your mother put me in charge of all things Heather related? She told me what a nuisance you were with that one, half the things that happened to her were your fault, Cheryl,” John pointed out, unknowingly hitting on all of Cheryl's weak spots. “If you would’ve just left her alone when your mother had warned you to do so, maybe it would’ve never happened, Maybe I would’ve never-”_

_“Shut up!” Cheryl finally screeched, having enough, tears running down her face probably leaving obvious tracks of makeup in its wake. “Shut up! You don’t get to say a word about her, after what you did to her, after what I had to_ watch _you do, you don’t get to say her name, you don’t get to hold me accountable for what happened that night.”_

_John’s face slackened just a little as his eyebrows kissed his hairline, Cheryl would’ve patted herself on the back for pulling that visceral of a reaction out of a man who seemed to be nothing if not phoney, except she was tied up._

_Cheryl looked upon John and noticed the malice in his eyes, she understood for the first time, that he was not just a bad man. Not just one of those run of the mill basic bad men who abused women who were becoming so commonly normalized in society for no good reason._

_Jonathan Topaz was_ sinister.  
_  
_ _Cheryl knew that for a fact from her previous discretions with him, her memories of him that were never to be called upon again, she realized with startling shock that she had always known this man for what he was, and yet she excused it in her own mind; time and time again._

_He was the kind of social parasite that Jesus had shunned from his temple, the kind of plague that you could never really quite get rid of without it taking you wholly._

_“You have quite the gall, Miss Blossom,” John lowered his voice, danger dripping from every pore. “To yell at your captor… especially when you know what I am capable of.”_

_Cheryl blanched. She would not be threatened into silence, not by anyone. Not by this man who thought himself higher than the rest just because he was a_ man, _and not by the guards outside his door who loomed threateningly just because they wore heavy vests over pounds of muscle. Cheryl was clever, she wasn’t a shrew, but she had the mind power to be, and she would con her way out of this too._

 _“You’re nothing but a fucking monster, John,” she growled. “You hear me? A fucking_ coward, _who hides behind the pain of other people to mask how fucking horrible you are. You know maybe Toni’s parents didn't leave because of her— I know you probably made her believe that, but maybe they left because you were just so. Fucking. Insuff-”_

_Before Cheryl could utter another word a fist came flying down across her face sending a numbing pain up her jaw and the side of her cheek._

_She could barely see for a minute, the world spinning in and out of her vision, moving like waves collapsing on rocks, breaking and fragmenting_

If I don’t see Jesus today I am one lucky bitch, _Cheryl thought to herself, squeezing her eyes shut, willing the queasiness in her stomach away._

_“Shut the fuck up, Blossom bitch,” he finally hissed, clearly having been brought to the end of his line at the statement. “My brother loved me, my sister-in-law loved me, what they didn’t love was that little brat who leeched them of their money from just existing. She drove them away, not me.”_

_Even through the miscalculated vision in both her eyes and the ringing in her ears, a certain anger burned like the color of her hair, like the color of everything in her life._

_She remembered this feeling, she had felt even when she wailed for the mercy of another that night in the barn when John-_

**_No. Cheryl, no._ **

_She could not to do this right now, she would not make herself vulnerable at a time where she needed to be her strongest._

_“You are nothing but a failure, John,” Cheryl finally whispered, too theatrical even for her own taste. “No one loves you, no one has ever loved you, and Toni? She is a_ good girl, _she’s the daughter that you would have never been blessed with because no woman could stand you for long enough to let you fuck her. Shame on you for fucking that up, because she’s mine now, and I’ll take care of her better than you ever will.”_

_John’s eyes narrowed into slits, they looked like the grills of a charcoal oven, holding back the flames of lapping energy that powered an entity._

_Cheryl knew she was signing her own death wish with each word she spoke, but she couldn’t help herself. How could she? When the man who was responsible for every inch of trauma she had suffered since she was thirteen was standing in front of her, threatening her with the life of yet another woman she adored,_ again?

 _“You don’t want to play this game, little girl,” John threatened menacingly. “All you have to do is promise me the money I need, an annual_ interest, _I guess you could say. To keep my mouth shut about all of this.”_

_Cheryl seethed._

_“You have no right to use my trauma against-”_

_John smiled devilishly, and not in the handsome way that most people would do. Cheryl wondered how someone related to Toni could be so ugly when the girl herself was the definition of beauty._

_“I have every right, Cheryl,” he shrugged. “Free country under terrible reign, and all that.”_

_“Toni would have your head,” Cheryl growled, and then added. “And so the fuck would I. I sit on millions of dollars thanks to my company and it’s copious business, if you think I don’t have the money to make you disappear and make it look like an accident, you are_ so _wrong.”_

_His fits clenched and unclenched, working away the clear anger in his eyes._

_“You wouldn’t dare.”_

_“But… wouldn’t I?”_

_And it was at that precise moment, that Toni came barreling through the door, falling flat on her face._

**iii.**

“Earth to Cheryl?” Toni called, waving her hands lightly in front of Cheryl’s face as she came back to reality, looking at the slightly battered girl in front of her.

“Sorry,” Cheryl gulped.

“No it’s fine,” Toni assured, sitting back on her haunches and maintaining an unnatural amount of distance between the two of the that Cheryl didn’t dare shorten. “Where’d you disappear to?”

“Nowhere,” she spoke quickly.

_Too quickly._

_This is going to get you_ **_caught,_ ** _Cheryl_.

Toni raised an eyebrow.

“Im serious, Toni, I’m _fine_ ,” Cheryl snapped, feeling more annoyed than usual.

Toni rolled her eyes, finally moving away from Cheryl, feeling the sentiment clear as day against her skin and soul.

“Got the message, Cheryl.”

Cheryl’s eyes widened.

_God what have you done now, Blossom?_

“Message? What mess-”

“That you don’t trust me enough to fucking tell me what is going on!” Toni finally burst with an incredulous chuckle, like she really couldn’t believe they were having this conversation. “Something obviously happened in there with _my_ uncle and _my_ girlfriend, and yet I’m way in the dark right now about absolutely everything.”

Cheryl could feel Toni slipping through her fingers like the most viscous fluids again, no amount of grasping would keep her there unless Cheryl finally build the dam and told her about the barn incident.

“I do trust you, Toni,” Cheryl tried, calmly, this was her last resort. “I really fucking do! But this just… it isn’t your place to know. I promise you I will tell you when… _if_ I ever get comfortable enough to tell you.”

She hoped this would have softened the girl, maybe even brought her around to seeing Cheryl’s side of the story, but it only aided to make Toni more angry.

“I don’t even know why were fucking doing this then,” Toni laughed humorlessly. “I trusted you enough to tell you about my fucked up past with my uncle, and I trust no _one,_ especially not some ragtag rich girl from upstate who looks like the only thing she’s ever cared about is money.”

Each word stings like a snake bite and Cheryl wonders if that’s why Toni’s a Serpent.

Because she’s just so _venomous_ when she’s defensive.

“And you’re not even fucking ready to tell me something that has to do with me? Something that has to do with my uncle? I mean think about it Cheryl, if it really is something so bad that you refuse to even talk about it, then maybe _just maybe,_ its something bad enough to get him incarcerated. Especially if _you_ take him to court,” Toni pointed out, a fire in her eyes that Cheryl had only seen before once, when she was telling Cheryl off in front of her trailer.

But the thought of taking John to court, to have not only one new person, but _several_ new people, literal strangers, know the most traumatic experience of Cheryl’s life.

She _shuddered._

“I can’t Toni,” Cheryl shook her head. “I can’t, I’m sorry.”

Toni clenched her jaw, snapping her teeth together and gluing her lips into a uniform line that made Cheryl’s spine tingle with an uncomfortable feeling. Certainly negative, and not one that she wanted to be feeling under any circumstance.

Soft brown eyes that Cheryl so badly wanted to look into for the rest of her life hardened, like raw earth in the middle of a harsh winter, like liquid chocolate left in the fridge for too long.

“Fine.”

Cheryl furrowed her brows together at the short answer, the word not doing anything to ease her pain like any words from Toni right now _should_ do.

In fact there was no emotion at all behind her demeanor.

“Fine?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Cheryl pressed, it was incredulous how even in the most dangerous of situations Toni could make her forget all about it and focus on just the girl.

Toni huffed in annoyance and rolled her eyes, a very _Cheryl_ think to do, the redhead noted but was too resigned to show any real emotion for it.

“It’s supposed to mean whatever the fuck the word is supposed to _mean,_ Cheryl, I thought you were good with English. This really is just the tip of the iceberg in kindergarten,” Toni condescended in a tone that made Cheryl prickle.

Not only did she hate being talked down to, being made out for less than what she was made Cheryl simmer with rage.

For a girl who had been demeaned by her mother and her peers all her life, a girl who had to earn her own respect in every aspect of her life, a girl who had done nothing but silently grovel for acceptance under the pretense of making everyone else do so to her, this was a harsh blow.

“Don’t do that…”

“Don’t do _what,_ Cheryl? Show you up at your own game? Hasn’t ever happened before, huh? Has no one ever taken the queen off her fucking high horse and shown her what the world is like for those of us on the ground?” Toni goaded, her eyes narrowing into criminalizing slits.

“Stop… _please.”_

“Oh fuck _off_ with that pity bullshit,” Toni scoffed. “You really think you can win _everyone_ over with those _crocodile_ tears-”

“Toni _stop.”_

Cheryl spoke as forcefully as she could, a sob breaking out through her chest as finally she felt a fissure form in the hard wall of her subconscious. A space where she had kept her most traumatic memories locked up for almost a decade, never to be looked at or thought of, never to be _felt_ ever again, a space that Toni had so forcefully invaded it almost felt like a violation. 

Toni’s mouth snapped shut, and even in the dim lighting of the dreary room, dolence in every corner, Cheryl could see her eyes widen.

Suddenly the hardass facade of a woman so set on a path to _destroy_ Cheryl fell apart, leaving a small and apologetic girl in its wake.

“Cheryl wait-”

“I said fucking _stop_ didn’t I?” Cheryl growled, her own anger reaching a point of no return. The girl had well and truly been pushed past her boundaries as she remembered the grinning and grimey face of John Topaz lingering over hers, breathing a musty smell into her face, filling her nostrils with a putrid scent that Cheryl had once believed she would never _stop_ smelling.

“I’m _sorry_ Cheryl, I didn’t know-”

“No, you never do, huh?” Cheryl shook her head, wiping tears from her eyes, sniffling as hard as her nose would allow. “You never know, you never know what’s good for you, you never know where to pull the line, every single time I talk to you Toni it seems to be that we end up in an argument. I know relationships have their ups and downs, but so far it kind of seems like all we _ever_ have are downs.”

Toni gulped, looking away with guilt ridden eyes and a befuddled conscience.

“Even that night, at my home, after I offered to take you in because you couldn’t sleep, you told me that I _deserved_ what happened to me in that barn, even though you didn’t even remotely have an idea of what happened. Just the same as you don’t know _now_ and somehow you seem to have deemed yourself to have the right to tell _me_ who I should trust with my _trauma.”_

“Cheryl I- I don’t know what else to say other than I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it,” Toni groveled.

“That too,” Cheryl scoffed. “You never mean it either, its always ‘ _Oh Cheryl I’m so sorry I will never hurt you ever again’_ and then somehow you manage to hurt me all over again.”

Toni blinked, her throat muscles flexing, the air rushing from her nostrils as her posture fell further.

“And like the fucking _stupid little ragtag rich girl I am,_ sitting on my high horse, I always accept you back into my life because I don’t know anything better, right?” Cheryl pressed.

Toni remained quiet, and for once Cheryl applauded her for not lacking common sense for once.

“So what is it then, Toni? Am I the perfect girl of your dreams whom you’ve always wanted to fuck and then get hitched with for the rest of your lowly life? Or am I the demon woman with the money that you never had, the woman who has never gone from Prada to nada because she has always just been _so. fucking. happy._ with her life?” she finally hissed, knowing that the words would hurt Toni.

If Toni had the gall to do it to her, then why shouldn’t Cheryl do it back?

Relationships were all about equality, right?

 _Give it to her good, princess,_ the red devil on her shoulder taunted. Goading her on.

 _You’re making a mistake,_ the purity of an ivory woman whispered, pressing into Cheryl's guilty conscience.

_You simply told her what you had to, Cheryl._

Toni’s mouth opened and closed, a numbness in her body that Cheryl could almost _see_.

But Cheryl was apathetic to that, wasn’t she?

Toni had just told her off, time and again, told her that she was worth _nothing_ more than the money in her bank, on a several number of occasions.

Toni **_deserved this._ **

**Right?**

“Okay,” Toni shrugged, turning away from Cheryl as a sort of desperation spread its icy claws over her spine into the girl’s bones.

What the hell did she mean _okay?_ After everything Cheryl had just told her, all she had to say for herself was _okay?_

“Really Toni? That’s it? Fucking _okay?”_ Cheryl could barely believe her ears. For all of Toni’s emotions, all the _badass with a chip on her shoulder_ facade that she put up, she was acting suspiciously lukewarm in this moment.

Inhale. Exhale. _Sigh._

“What do you want me to say, Cheryl?” Toni shook her head, voice monotonous, almost dispassionate in a kind of manner that made Cheryl _scared._ “I fucked up. You just _told me_ I fucked up, and it’s pretty clear you don’t want to be around me right now, do you really want me trying to defend myself when obviously you’ve made up your mind?”

Cheryl drug her hands through her hair, cursing herself for blowing up.

_If she’d just kept it all inside, like she’s taught herself to do._

_If only she wasn’t so fucking_ **_incompetent._ **

She felt as though she had to say something, to make it _right_ somehow, but how could she? She had messed this up herself, just like her mother had always told her she did.

She could just _hear_ it in her mind, how worthless her mother would be calling her despite the homophobia.

_Couldn’t even keep a girl despite your deviance, could you, Cheryl?_

_You lose everything you’ve ever loved._

_Because you were never_ **_born_ ** _to be loved, you weren’t supposed to be born at all._

_We were just expecting Jason._

_You were a_ **_deal_ ** _we_ **_never asked for._ **

Her blood boiled, nails digging harshly into her own palm, an action she had once seen Betty do to curb her anger and Cheryl had been doing it as well ever since. It was kind of like snapping a tie against her wrist whenever she was in public because angry red welts in her palm wouldn’t look good during a handshake with a businessman.

“Cheryl, what’s going on in there?” Toni finally asked, cautiously.

_She’s perfect, she really is._

**And you pushed her to her limit.**

**_Pushed._ **

_Like you always do, pushing until it breaks, pushing people away._

“Do you care?”

Toni sighed, squeezing her eyes shut like she was controlling herself before opening them again.

“Stop twisting things, Cheryl. Sometimes things are just as they are, I’m asking you how you are because I _still care,_ despite everything I said.”

Cheryl’s gut recoiled and lurched.

 **She still** **_cares._ **

Wonder how long _that_ will last.

They aren’t even out of their first fight yet and everything seems to have shifted, yet _again._

Cheryl knew deep down that this would have to be talked about sooner or later, they couldn’t go on like this, unresolved tensions building higher.

But for now?

It would have to do.

“I just- I _screw_ everything up, Toni,” Cheryl sighed. “I can barely even keep us from having a single fight in the less than twenty four hours we’ve been together.

Toni’s eyes softened as she, albeit hesitantly, brushed the backs of her knuckles against Cheryl’s cheek.

“Not everyone can be good at everything.”

“Yeah,” Cheryl laughed wistfully. “But I happen to be good at nothing.”

Toni screwed her face into a tight confused look, tilting her head gently to the side like a confused puppy.

“You’re sitting on a multimillion dollar company and you want to tell me that you’re not good at anything?”

Cheryl felt herself bristle again.

Was this how it was always going to be with them?

“Can you never think of anything outside of _money_ , Toni?” Cheryl growled, growing defensive.

Toni’s eyes widened before she huffed and shuffled into the darkness, leaning against a wall, far away from Cheryl.

“Whatever Blossom, fuck you.”

And it was only then that Cheryl realized truly how different and separate the two girls were in their nature. How completely incompatible they were, from the trauma they both suffered sparring and jousting with each other, almost fighting to see who was _more_ damaged, to the uptilted nose that Toni always seemed to look under and the pink hair she believe Cheryl looked down on.

They had jumped _straight_ into the heavy things, never pausing, never waiting, never thinking that the speed of their development would crumple them in the future.

Cheryl wondered if the Blossom Curse was just that then.

The inability to ever form a correct romantic relationship with anyone.

Maybe even platonic, but Cheryl has side stepped that luckily with Betty and Veronica.

_Doomed to a life of loneliness._

_A Blossom child born unwanted would die unwanted._

**_Never loved._ **

The door creaked open then, stealing both girls’ somber attention away from each other, as Cheryl looked up to the gangly lurking face of the man who was responsible for all of this.

For _everything._

“Well hello, ladies,” John lowly mumbled with a raised eyebrow.

Neither of them said anything, their bodies prickling and bristling. Cheryl didn’t even know how it happened but they gravitated towards each other, Toni getting up and sliding easily in front of Cheryl and the redhead remaining lucratively behind her Serpent.

“What do you want, John?” Toni grumbled. “Haven’t you had enough _fun?_ Embarrassing me in front of my girlfriend?”

“Oh _girlfriend_ huh?” He smiled crookedly, snaggle teeth standing out from points under his lips. “To the best of my knowledge you guys hardly know each other and yet here we are, in a committed relationship. Doesn’t that scare either one of you?”

Cheryl tensed, waiting for Toni's answer with baited breath.

_You fucking stereotypical example of U-Haul Lesbian._

“No,” the pink haired girl finally answered. “When you know, you know, John. Not that it’s any of your business.”

_When you know, you know._

So she **knows.**

How much of Cheryl did Toni _really_ know though? Outside of the things Cheryl had already disclosed or things that were public information now.

But now was not the time to think of these kind of things.

Not when they were both trapped.

At the mercy of a man who would only believe as much as he saw.

Cheryl’s eyes snapped wider open in the moment, imperceptibly so, looking between Toni and John.

He would only believe as much as he **saw.**

John would never let them go if he truly believed that they meant something to each other. He would never let Toni go harmlessly without Cheryl giving him a sum of money if he knew she really cared.

Steeling herself, Cheryl finally did the one thing that she knew would end this with the least amount of collateral damage.

_In the long run, anyways._

“What’s your price for letting me walk free?”

Toni’s eyes widened.

John smiled sinisterly.

“ _Just_ you?”

Cheryl swallowed thickly before nodding.

“Cheryl…”

The disbelief in Toni’s voice was palpable, so much so that Cheryl could swear she saw the girl stumble backwards out of the corner of her eye.

The guilt would eat Cheryl alive, she wished she could yell, _scream,_ tell Toni she wasn’t the only one hurting right now. But she couldn’t, Cheryl Blossom had a plan, and like hell was she going to let her emotions  get in the way of delivering them both to safety.

John seemed to cash in on the blatant misery of his only living relative (that he _knew_ was alive, anyways).

His eyes flashed with a light hearted joy that sickened Cheryl to her stomach as he gazed upon the battered face of his niece, Toni’s face crestfallen and broken as she turned away from both the people in the room.

“Oh _man,_ Ant, you really thought you did something with this one, _jeez,”_ he practically chortled, taking in every ounce of pleasure. “Jesus Bombshell, you sure know how to make the deadly deliveries at just the right time. How long have you been planning that one?”

Cheryl grit her teeth together.

Whatever it took to sell the act.

“A while. I can’t believe she thought we would last, I mean really? A piece of scum from the Southside who dances for the world to see on her off days? With _me?_ A multimillion dollar company owner with self respect?” Cheryl looked down at her nails, masking her hurt eyes with every word she says and barked out the world’s most fake laugh. “All I wanted was a fuck.”

_Pin. Drop. Silence._

**Ruined.**

_You ruined her, Cheryl._

_What will she become?_

A quiet sob broke forth from behind Cheryl and she refused to look back as Toni’s strangled voice rung out.

“You don’t mean that, _god,_ John she _doesn’t_ mean that!”

Her voice grew desperate as she tugged and yanked at the back of Cheryl’s shirt, urging the girl to turn around and _look_ at her.

To _feel._

But Blossoms did not feel, it was the one thing Cheryl was good at and she would be damned if she didn’t use that to her advantage in her time of need.

“I think she meant it, Toni,” John laughed, disbelief of a positive kind in his eyes, an entertained kind, as he looked from the redhead to his own blood relative. “What a _good_ show, Blossom, I think I have to let you go just for that.”

Cheryl’s swollen throat deflating a little at that.

Her plan was working.

 _Finally,_ something was going her way.

John stepped aside, looking to Toni once more, keeping a guarded hand over his niece’s body with an evil innocence.

“Go on, Blossom. You’ve given me a kind of gift that I didn’t even know you could’ve, something far _greater_ than money,” he chuckled. “I know you dont care, clearly, but… I think you should know- this bitch _never_ believed me when I told her she wasn’t worth the time of anyone’s day. Not her parents, not mine, and now, not even yours.”

Cheryl’s eyes widened only slightly as she _finally_ looked to Toni, trying to see something, to convey the message to her. This is not what she wanted, she didn’t want _this._

But there was nothing.

Toni’s eyes were downcast, surrendered, there was not even a hint of the girl she had been on the rooftop only hours ago.

 _You_ **_broke_ ** _her, Cheryl, like you breaking everything you touch._

She just wanted to _leave,_ she had done her part, played her game, she wanted to _go._

“Let her go, John,” Toni finally spoke, monotonous, her voice cracking.

“Of course,” he waved towards the door. “My men will stand down, you’re free to go, Cheryl.

And so, with a final glance back at Toni, whose back was now to her, Cheryl fled.

She turned tail and she _ran_ like the coward she was.

The powerless monster who hurt people before making them feel better.

But this would all work out in the end.

It had to.

It was her only saving thought as she finally fled out the large doors of the broken building they had been held captive in, her mind racing a million miles a minute.

She would get Toni out of there.

She would not leave her.

Cheryl would not be the cause of another broken soul. 

She would  _ **not.**  _


	10. You Can Never Be Loved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In celebration of the deleted scenes (holy fuck btw) here's a chapter. I promise I will update soon after this :')

****  
**i.**

At eight years old, Toni believed she had the whole world.  _ Everything  _ was at her disposal, from ice cream trucks, to pennies lying on the side of the road, to dreams and wishes her parents had from her, and to dreams and wishes  _ she  _ had  _ for herself.  _

At ten years old, her beliefs waned.

Her parents disappeared on her, leaving her at the mercy of a man who never had a vocabulary farther than the word  _ destroy. _

But she groveled, she worked through it, she forced herself to be the best  _ Toni Topaz  _ that she could be.

At twelve years old, she lost sight of the light.

The first smack of an open hand fell across her back, bruising her, commandeering the rest of the black and blue smudges of gruesome artwork on her tanned canvas. 

No one heard her when she was twelve, no one heard her sob into her pillow at night with a throbbing pain under her skin, just as they didn’t hear her cry out for help that evening. 

At thirteen years old, Toni learned how to be quiet.

She watched mice in her free time. There seemed to be a lot of those hanging around in the trailer park. 

It was only fitting, rats and snakes living together.

Deplorable filth festering in one area, leaving the North to deal with their posh problems; the glitter of gold and the flash of money.

The mice were quiet, silent,  _ precise. _

Toni aimed to be that too, and soon she was. She didn’t make a single noise that year as she breathed in controlled increments, spaced out between each painful  _ thwack.  _

At fourteen years old, Toni finally became a high school student.

She was far from the norm though, even by Southside standards. She was a disquieting mind, troubled by the perils at home, so much so that even her teachers noticed; which wasn’t hard to do amongst the commotion of the rowdy Serpent offspring. 

Teachers tried and failed to bring her back to the present, to remind her that the cracked fluorescent tube lights she sat under flickered just so she could get an education. 

Toni scoffed every time.

No one in that fucking school was there for an education.

Neither was she.

At fifteen years old, Toni learned what a tranquil place the library was.

She buried her nose in a book everyday and got lost somewhere, maybe in the cold crisp winter of Narnia’s lands, or maybe some other gem by C.S. Lewis.

A lot of times she even found herself gravitating towards the murder mystery sections.

That was, until she saw the first mention of abuse and she had to snap it shut, the sound resonating through the empty library and jolting the practically deceased centuries old man who snored behind the library desk. 

Toni wasn’t even really sure what his job was. 

Finally at sixteen, she had paradise.

Well, as close to paradise as she could get sitting thousands of miles away from peace. 

She found a job at the Whyte Wyrm, a place where she could make money, a place where she could  _ earn  _ for as long as she wanted, be there for as many hours as she needed. 

So long as she kept herself useful. 

It then became a sanctuary, a place sans hostility where she would sneak away to on the back of Sweet Pea or Fangs’ motorcycle, whichever one of them had decided to go to school that day, and stay for the rest of the day. 

At the ripe age of sixteen, Toni finally realized what it meant to have  _ family.  _

Not a man who beat you if you breathed wrong, and not absentee parents who never turned around and looked at you again the minute they decided things were too rough for them.

It was the hooting and hollering of senseless men, thrown together in a coalition of poverty, fighting the injustice thrust upon them by the richer side of town.

It was the realization, dawning on Toni every second she mixed together a new drink, that she was  _ not alone  _ in her grief.

Everyone in there shared almost the same sentiment as her, shying away from a life outside of the bar that did not seek to give them any mercy, only pound them until they were standing at death’s door, a breath away from never taking one again.

Seventeen went much like sixteen, and Toni built a tolerance. 

Not for the alcohol, she wasn’t very much of a drinker. She had seen the outcomes of one too many shots of tequila or vodka to be enticed by the likes of a mind numbing liquid substance. 

She had built a tolerance for the pain.

No longer did she wince in anguish stepping over the slightly raised door of the bar, or going up the stairs at school, the bruises in her sides stopped hurting minutes after they’d been delivered.

That didn’t mean her heart stopped hurting, or that her brain stopped pounding itself, wondering what she had done wrong. 

Eighteen was a shining moment in Toni’s life, an angel poking its head through the door, beckoning her to step out of her uncle’s beat up trailer into an  _ equally  _ beat up trailer but one that would be her own. A trailer where she could sleep peacefully at night without having to wake up intermittently and make sure that she didn’t hear the clobbering foot steps of a drunk man raging down the two inch hallway before placing his knobby and large knees on either side of her, getting ready to beat her into unconsciousness. 

She breathed fresh airs of relief even in the musty air of a run down park, it was the scent of  _ freedom  _ in her nostrils. 

Of course  _ that  _ only lasted as long as John didn’t find out where she lived. 

Which wasn’t long at all.

She should've known, should've  _ realized,  _ that a man like that, a man who purely got off to beating her senseless would never  _ truly  _ leave her alone.

Though he didn’t dare raising a hand on her anymore, he did harass her, relentlessly so, to the point where he was no longer allowed at the Wyrm because of his ways.

At eighteen Toni had thought she was finally rid of all the demons, she had thought she had felt all of the pain in life that was worth feeling. 

But now, at twenty three, Toni realized that she was far from it. She was no expert on anything romantic, sure she had a few flings here and there with the men and women who frequented the Wyrm, and even  _ one  _ long lasting relationship, but that was  _ nothing  _ compared to what she had with Cheryl.

All the sadness over the one breakup which had gotten to her was nothing compared to the hole ripping into her heart as she stood, facing the concrete wall on the far side of the room. 

_ She  _ **_never_ ** _ liked you.  _

**_‘All I wanted was a fuck’._ **

_ That’s all you were.  _

_ A means to an end.  _

Toni still could not quite wrap her mind around what had just happened. A little part of her wanted to believe that Cheryl knew better than that, that Cheryl was capable of so many things, she probably had a plan. 

Then the far larger part of her, the part of her that refused to trust anyone, sought to overrun her, to remind her that there was nothing she could do to keep the people she loved from leaving her. 

“How are you feeling, Ant?” He mocked from behind her. 

She had  _ nothing  _ to say to him. It wasn’t like they spoke to each other much anyways, even when she lived with him,  _ yelling  _ was more like it.

“I suggest you leave before I  _ rip  _ you to pieces,” Toni growled, knowing herself, hearing it in her tone, how hollow the promise was. 

John chuckled.

“I’d like to see you try, with the guards behind me, ready to pounce on you if you so much as  _ breathe  _ wrong, I really think you’d get pretty far with that,” he smiled, cocking his head to the side. 

Toni glanced over his shoulder, and of course he was right, she could never out do all those guards by herself. No matter how much experience she had jabbing and sparring with Sweet Pea and Fangs. 

Two teenage boys were no match  to five apparently highly trained and heavily armed guards.

The sheer volume of men outside the door made Toni stumble a little.

Cheryl wouldn’t  _ really  _ leave her here with all these men trying to harm her, would she? She  _ cared  _ about Toni, she had shown that much to her over the weeks that they spent together forging a friendship.

If not as a lover, or a friend, then simply as a person who felt empathy as much as any other normal being would, Cheryl  _ would  _ come back for Toni. 

She  **had** to. 

All Toni needed to do was buy herself some time. 

“I’m not leaving, John,” Toni shrugged, looking her captor in the eyes. “I have nowhere to go. You’re right, no one wants me, no  _ one,  _ so I guess you should just pull the plug on me, huh?”

The sick smirk twisted onto his face eternally finally unwound as he looked to his niece in shock.    


Why the hell was he  _ shocked _ ? 

This was what he  **wanted.**

Toni even dared to go far enough and say  **_craved._ **

He laid awake at nights, thinking about this moment, perhaps sickeningly getting his rocks off to imagining the murder, peril, anguish, of his own niece. Of the girl he wanted to strangle since she step foot in his trailer.

“You gave up that easily?” He sneered, something sinister in his tone. “Over a  _ girl?”  _

“She’s not just  _ any  _ girl, I-” Toni stumbled, wondering how her skit was beginning to merge with reality. “I really like her.  _ Liked  _ her.” 

John scoffed.

“Oh shut  _ up,”  _ his eyes rolled. “Stop acting like you’ve ever known pain.”

“I’m  _ sorry,”  _ she stepped closer to her perpetrator. “Am I supposed to  _ forget  _ the millions and millions of bruises you practically  _ canvased  _ my body with?” 

Something like anger flickered in his eyes. Only much  _ much  _ worse. 

“You know, Toni, I had to put up with your fucking  _ attitude  _ and your  _ nonsense  _ and those pesky fucking friends of yours for as long as you lived with me. Eight long years, I think I’m owed a little bit of gratitude for that, don’t you?” 

_ How fucking  _ **_dare_ ** _ he?  _

_ How dare he imply that  _ **_he_ ** _ was the one who deserved anything but hate?  _

**_Spite?_ **

Toni couldn’t fathom the words coming out of his mouth. 

She could barely contain her own rage,

It was foaming at her mouth, threatening to spill out and over into the void. 

“I think you lost your honor badge of  _ best pseudo father  _ the minute I started limping in the morning from how fucking  _ hard  _ you hit me the last night,” Toni’s voice lowered to nothing.

“You deserved it, Toni!” He finally yelled, his patience wearing thin. 

Toni wearily eyed the gun that clicked back and forth in place against his thigh. 

“Did I? What did I, a twelve year old child, do to aggravate you so bad that I  _ deserved  _ to be beat senseless every night?”

“You drove the only family  _ I had  _ away,” John stepped closer, their bodies nearly touching now, making Toni squirm with discomfort.

He took a deep breath before starting again.

“You drove  _ her  _ away.” 

Toni’s eyes widened. 

“My mother,” Toni whispered. 

John’s eyes hardened, looking directly into the soul of the girl who was nothing but the shadow of the woman his brother had stolen from him.

“Your mother, yes Toni, she was the absolute most beautiful thing I had ever laid my eyes on,” his hands wrapped around his gun handle resolutely. “I didn’t resent my brother for marrying her. Who  _ wouldn’t  _ want to marry that beauty?” 

It revolted Toni, her insides retching back and forth, convulsing. 

She had been a beautiful woman. At least from whatever Toni could remember of her.

Porcelain skin ( _ a lot like Cheryl’s,  _ Toni reprimanded herself for thinking) and a smile that could outshine any darkness. Green eyes so tender they might’ve broken like fragile glass. 

Toni remembered loving her. 

Before she left anyways. 

She suffered for so long, so quietly, under the reign of her uncle, because of her mother. 

Her absentee mother who had fled from her life without a single word. 

“You hurt me because you loved my mother?” 

Each word packed more of a punch than the last, Toni’s eyes to the ground, not meeting the eyes of the man in front of her.

“Well of course,” his voice regained its quasi joviality. “That’s why you deserved it, because if you had never been born, then they would’ve never left.” 

“You know why they left?” Toni asked, her voice lowering to a whisper. 

All these years, she had never really dared to ask, though she had been aware that perhaps John knew. 

She had never had the gall to question the man who could turn on her and paint multiple painful bruises on her back instead of answering her question. 

John hummed and turned away from her. 

“Only partly. They left me with a parting gift, a note,” he traveled around the room in a dramatic fashion, Toni watching his every move closely. 

Silence.

Toni’s blood boiled again.

“Care to enlighten me, John?”

John turned again, finally, meeting her eyes. Conviction, pain,  _ anger,  _ and vengeance burning bright. 

“The information comes at a price, Antoinette.” 

“When has anything come for free with you?”

John laughed, a genuine almost honest-to-god chuckle.

“True,” he clicked his heels together and stood stoic, his face morphing into something more serious. “ _ Do you accept the charges?”  _

Toni rolled her eyes at that.

Of course he would try to imitate a prison phone operator, when was he ever  _ not  _ the most dramatic person in the universe? 

“Yes, John, I do.”

His eyes lit up. 

His mouth opened. 

**_Thump._ **

Toni’s heart nearly began to burst out of her chest.

After all these years she would know.

_ Finally- _

**THUMP.**

Toni startled.

_ That  _ was not the sound of her heart. That almost sounded like the forceful opening of a  _ really large door-  _

“Tiny?!”

_ No! Not now!  _

Not when she was just about to acquire the most valuable information from her stay at the Fucked Up Inn. She almost felt a curse on the tip of her tongue as her neurons finally connected and remembered that that was the voice of her friend, her  _ best  _ friend, Sweet Pea. 

Her eyes traversed back to John who looked taken aback. 

“Your  _ friends.”  _

Toni swallowed the pain like a pill, she wasn’t supposed to be feeling depressed right now, she wasn’t supposed to be wishing that they had left her alone for a few more minutes. She needed to have the relief, she needed to  _ know  _ why her parents had left. 

“I suppose they  _ are  _ pesky after all,” Toni grit out. 

John growled as the door broke down and Toni scrambled out of the way to avoid the debris in its wake; she scrambled straight into the waiting body of her uncle. His arms wrapping like a reflex around her body, holding her hostage, his forearm pressed against her neck and the barrel of his gun to her temple.

Sweet Pea, Fangs, and  _ Cheryl  _ stood in the doorway, backlit, and looking like the most odd trio of superheroes. 

“C _ heryl,”  _ Toni whimpered despite herself. 

Cheryl’s cat like red lips stretched into a sexy grin.

“You didn’t really think I would leave you behind, did you now, TT?” 

“And she fuckin’ brought back up,” Sweet Pea scoffed, his hand trembling under the weight of a pistol in his palm. “Smart one, this one.” 

John laughed evilly beside her head. 

“You think the three of you can take  _ me  _ on? Me and my guard-” he paused. “My  _ guards…”  _

Fangs stepped forward. 

“Well,” he started, his face bored and a knife swishing back and forth between his fingers. “Those guards of yours… it’s crazy what a little threatening from Sweets and some hush money from Red over here will do.” 

John snarled and pressed the gun so harshly into Toni’s temple she swore it would leave a circle indentation there for the rest of her life. 

“You guys talk tough game but all it takes is two seconds for me to pull the trigger and for her to be dead.”

“I don’t think it would be wise of you to do that, John,” Cheryl spoke menacingly, and Toni hated to admit to herself that even at a time like this she had the gall to feel turned on. “I’ve got five men, all feeding from my money, ready to testify against you in the court of law- and while I know the policing here in the South is light, I can assure you that  _ my  _ lawyers will not take kidnapping lightly.” 

John growled. 

And then before Toni knew it, she was being thrown towards Cheryl like a rag doll, falling limply against the body of the taller woman who immediately wrapped her arms around the lithe Serpent.

“ _ Toni,”  _ Cheryl breathed, like she was finally at peace. 

Toni whimpered into the shoulder of Cheryl’s jacket, forgetting for a moment everything that they had been fighting about, forgetting the hateful words she had spewed about Toni before finding her way out. For right now, none of that mattered, right now, Cheryl was getting Toni out of this damned place, and they would be safe. 

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” the rich girl whispered lovingly against the shell of Toni’s ear. 

She was, she felt it for the first time, she was safe.

They spent a few more moments wrapped up lucratively in each other before Cheryl pulled Toni around her so the Serpent was now shielded by the clearly taller girl.

“As for you John…” 

“I gave you Toni back,” he growled, eyes squinting. “Let me go.” 

Toni tensed in Cheryl’s arms. Would he ever tell Toni what he was going to if Cheryl let him go? She needed to know, it didn’t matter that this was the man who had beat her for so many years, right now the only thing that mattered was extracting information from him.

“No,” Cheryl replied solidly, and when Toni looked back to the girl, there was a kind of reprise in her eyes. Something that would not be shaken, even if Toni pleaded for her to let him go. 

“Cheryl darling,” John laughed carefully, eyeing the two boys next to her.

“You know what the fuck you did John, you don’t deserve to walk free for another day of your life,” Cheryl growled, and Toni felt her pride swell. That was really  _ her  _ girl. “Maybe you don’t understand  _ consequences  _ because you’ve never had to pay for all the shit you’ve done in your life, but don’t worry. I will exact the bill and  _ more,  _ I will make you wish that you were never fucking born, John Topaz.” 

“You know what, Cheryl?” He growled, stepping closer. Out of the corner of Toni’s eyes she saw her friends shuffle and move to grab him. “I wish your mother would’ve let me give you the same treatment that I gave Heath-”

A kind of rage burst forth from Cheryl that enveloped the whole room in a metaphorical red glow. 

Before any of them could process what was going on, Cheryl had grabbed the gun from Sweet Pea’s hand and fired a shot.

_ “Cheryl!”  _ Toni gasped, groping uselessly at the back of her red jacket just in time to see John fall to the floor.

**_Dear god Cheryl what have you done?_ **

**A favor.**

Her mind knew this was good, this was what she  _ needed,  _ but her heart… it craved the information she knew John had.

“I- I,” Cheryl stammered, looking wildly between the blood pooling around John now and the gun in her hand. 

Toni’s attention snapped back like an elastic rubber band to her girlfriend. 

“Hey,  _ hey,”  _ she cupped the back of Cheryl’s neck and forced the girl to look at her with those scared doe eyes. “Look at me Cheryl, it’s going to be okay, nothing is going to happen, look away from the blood, baby.” 

Cheryl gulped heavily, her chest undulating up and down.

Toni placed Cheryl’s hand over her heart and breathed in and out, the air escaping her lungs steadily until the redhead shakily matched her speed.

“There you go,” Toni assured. 

“I  _ shot  _ him,” Cheryl whispered, eyes still panicked but her breathing calm. 

Toni looked away, down at her uncle covered in blood now, lying limply on the floor.

_ Still breathing.  _

She hated herself for the quick rush of relief that fueled her veins. The bastard was still alive, alive and incapacitated, she could make him _ dance  _ to her tune so long as she played her cards right. 

“Is he dead, TT?” Cheryl whimpered, moving closer to Toni. 

“No, sweetheart, he’s not,” she scanned his body quickly noticing that Cheryl had blown out his kneecap with a shot to the leg. “Just passed out from the pain.”

Silence. 

“So what do we do with him now?” Sweet Pea chimes and for the first time Toni remembered that they were there too.

She sparingly shot them a grateful smile before looking back down at John. 

“Load him up boys. You know the drill.” 

**ii.**

In the span of a dizzying two hours, Toni found herself riding in the passenger seat of Cheryl’s posh red Audi Q5, a car that was maintained to the utmost pinnacle of care, riding to Thornhill with Sweet Pea and Fangs on a bike behind them. 

Not  _ only  _ were they following Cheryl and Toni, but they had an unconscious and bound John wedged between the two of them, limply dangling in a rather precarious position. 

It had been Toni’s idea, filling Cheryl in as the boys worked meticulously to clean the blood and then heave John onto the bike. 

_ “What do you mean we’re avenging ourselves?”  _ Cheryl had asked quietly while cowering in the corner of the room with Toni soothing her.

_ “You’ve got a big basement right?”  _

_ “I’ve got a maid’s quarter down there if you need, TT,”  _ she answered, albeit hesitantly. 

_ “That’s perfect.”  _

John would not be getting out any time soon, Toni resolved, ice settling over her bones. She would be keeping him locked in Cheryl’s maid quarters with rationed food and water, away from civilization, driving him mad with loneliness. 

Driving him insane from the lack of  _ alcohol.  _

She would be over Cheryl’s house often, forcing the truth out of him until he painted the whole picture.

And when  _ finally  _ he outlived his usefulness, Cheryl could do whatever she wanted with him. Take him to court, kill him, ship him off to a third world country with no healthcare.

Toni wouldn’t care.

“How are you doing?”

She looked to the driver's seat, finding a concerned Cheryl sparingly glancing at her. 

Toni laughed incredulously. 

“ _ You  _ got kidnapped for what is I’m assuming the first time in your life, and you’re asking  _ me  _ how I’m doing?” 

Cheryl sheepishly smiled.

“Yeah, I guess so. Are you implying that this  _ isn’t  _ your first time getting kidnapped?” she quirked an eyebrow at Toni. 

The pink haired Serpent shrugged cockily. 

“I’m in a gang, shit happens.”

“Shit like  _ getting kidnapped?” _

“What can I say, I’m the jack of all trades,” Toni smiled, looking over at Cheryl who shook her head in disbelief. 

“And the master of none,” Cheryl finished jokingly.

And then there was silence again, both girls falling into a sumptuous headspace, acknowledging that they could not simply put what had just happened in the past and move on like there was no yesterday. 

But for now they had greater things to worry about.

And an injured man to get to solitude before someone figured out what was going on. 

“Do you regret getting involved with me yet?” Toni questioned meekly, only just now realizing what daunting situation Cheryl had been put in just because of her.

Brown eyes softened as she rolled to a stop at a red light, the motorcycle behind them revving every few seconds. 

Each moment passed in painstaking clarity. 

_ 1… 2… 3…  _

“No,” Cheryl finally huffed, and Toni didn’t believe her. 

“Don’t lie,” Toni admonished slightly aggravated. 

“Toni…” Cheryl looked at her with a slight frown on her face before the light flickered to green and she had to turn her attention back to the road. “I’m not lying.”

“You were literally  _ kidnapped  _ because of me,” Toni argued, trying to find reason.

“And I would do it again for you, Toni,” Cheryl prompted, reaching over and gently gripping the tan thigh of her girlfriend. “As you’ve probably deduced already, I have a certain  _ history  _ with John… so whatever happened with you is just fate throwing me full circle with that man.”

The end of her sentence got gritty, voice clamming into a more angry tone, jarring Toni. She had heard Cheryl in almost all stages of anger, from fuming to calculated to absurdly depressed anger. But never had Toni seen Cheryl  _ seethe,  _ she had never seen the kind of hunger in her eyes that wanted to demolish everything in it’s sight.

She just had to wonder again, what exactly John had done to her to make her this resentful.

But she knew better than to ask again.

The last time she had pushed to hard, she had almost prompted Cheryl into an irreversible rage.

“I know you’re curious, Toni,” Cheryl acknowledged, shooting the girl a look as they rumbled up the winding driveway of the Blossom Manors, leading through a mileage of trees before they reached the house. “And you have every right to be. All I ask is that you give me some time before asking me to tell you what happened. I just need some time.”

Whereas she had been full of vigor, filled to the brim with rage, and ready to battle Toni to the death only hours ago, she was softer now. 

Still reticent and adjourning all of Toni’s questions about her previous life, but not fighting.

Toni reached over and enveloped a soft palm within her own calloused one.

Oh how different of an upbringing they’d both had, it showed in the texture of their fucking  _ palms,  _ and yet how broken they both were. Marred by demons that scratched and clawed at their skin until there was nothing left but the raw pain of an unhealed past.

“I’m sorry I pushed you before, Cheryl,” Toni admitted quietly, watching the side of her lover’s face. “You take as long as you need.”

The redhead said nothing in return, just smiling, as they eventually pulled up in front of Thornhill Manor. 

“Am I to believe that those fumbling oafs are going to get John all the way into my basement all by their lumbering selves?” Cheryl muttered as she watched Sweet Pea and Fangs ride in behind her, struggling to hold the unconscious man upright between them. 

“Hey!” Toni laughed, watching the boys out of the rearview mirror. “They’ve carried sacks of drugs heavier than him.”

“Your illegal actions don’t serve to make me feel any better,” Cheryl deadpanned, looking Toni in the eyes.

Toni shrugged. 

“I know you find it hot, don’t fight me on it.”

Cheryl’s jaw unhinged, hanging slightly open, eyes darkening with lust as Toni unbuckled herself and stepped out of the car. She would not let herself get carried away with sex when there was a man wounded by a bullet wound being taken hostage by them right now.

“Toni Topaz you are incorrigible,” Cheryl scoffed, before following her girlfriend out of the car and meeting the boys as they held John up concretely between their shoulders. 

Fangs heaved loudly, before dropping his weight onto one hip and holding John up with the other.

“So, Red, where do you want him?” 

Cheryl blinked. 

Toni struggled to hold back a giggle at that. This was clearly the first time Cheryl was dealing with person like he was a furniture she had just U-Hauled. 

“She’s got a maid’s quarter in her basement, put him there,” Toni ordered for Cheryl, pointing into the house as both of her friends nodded at her and made their way inside. 

Cheryl just looked after them, watching them go with the utmost confused look in her eyes. 

“Cher?”

“He’s going to be held hostage… at my home.”

Toni frowned, reaching over and running her fingers through the silky knotless locks of orange hair at the nape of Cheryl’s neck. 

“Are you not okay with that? I’ve got other places he can go if you’re uncomfortable-”

“No,” Cheryl shook her head, turning to Toni and cupping the shorter girl’s face gently in her hands. “No, it’s not that. I’ve just… Toni I know you’re going to hate me for rambling about the experience I won’t talk about but… I’ve envisioned having him in my grasp for so long that now that it’s here I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose control.”

Toni furrowed her brows and stepped closer. 

“You can text me whenever you need Cheryl, or- or call. If you think you’re going to do something you regret just ask me to come over and I’ll  _ be there.”  _

Cheryl sniffled and rested her head against the tanned (and rather large but she was one to talk) forehead. 

“Toni I…” she paused. “You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me.” 

Toni laughed crookedly but affectionately so.  

“A damaged, poor, and aggressive gang member stripper with an uncle who terrorized you is the best thing that’s ever happened to you? Gee, Cheryl, we need to get you outside a bit more,” she joked, but remained sensitive.

Cheryl rolled her eyes. 

**Classic.**

_ You love that about her. _

Toni did. 

“Oh shut it, you being the most ethereal person as a soul has nothing to do with your backstory or your class status or any other bullshit like that,” Cheryl emphasized. “I… I want to move past our discrepancies. I know we’ve said our fair share of things that we don’t mean, but maybe we should start over, on a clean slate?”

Toni’s eyes softened at the edges.

Who was she to deny this literal puppy of a woman? 

“Of course, baby.”

Her hand wrapped around the back of Cheryl’s neck and pulled her down in for a kiss, even with something nagging in the back of her mind.

**_‘All I wanted was a fuck.’_ **

**Stop.**

Stop thinking about it before you ruin it.

And so she did. 

She shut her brain off and let her mouth get pulled into a sweet suction of red lips that wiped her thoughts clean. 

“Yo! Tiny and Red! Slow it with the PDA, for the love of god!” Sweet Pea yelled from inside the house, standing at the doorway as Cheryl and Toni pulled away with a giggle and a  _ smack.  _

“What do you  _ need  _ Pea?” Toni groaned, looking at her best friend who looked amused and slightly disgusted. 

“I’m sorry, you seem to have forgotten that this is the first time we’ve been to Blossom’s mansion. We don’t know which of these fucking ten thousand doors lead to the basement,” he deadpanned. 

Cheryl sheepishly grinned, enveloping Toni’s hand in hers before walking towards Sweet Pea. 

“Sorry Sweet Pea.”

“No problem, Blossom, just show us around,” he stepped aside and let the girls in, and then added an afterthought. “Maybe even treat us to some of that food royalty I know you eat on a daily basis.”

“Sweets!” Toni reprimanded while Cheryl giggled again. 

“I’m a poor man, Toni, I have no shame,” he shrugged, smiling childishly. 

“That’s okay, TT,” Cheryl wrapped a long arm around the lonesome shoulders of her Serpent girl. “They are guests and I am the most hospitable of hosts. I promise, Sweet Pea, once this whole holding a person hostage thing is over with, I’ll introduce you to pancakes with  _ Blossom Maple Syrup.”  _

Quickly enough, Cheryl and Sweet Pea were walking ahead of Toni, weaving their way through the manor to where Fangs was tending John, as she fell behind and watched with a content smile on her face. 

This was her family. 

Not John.

Not the parents who had loved her only as long as it was convenient. 

These people, who had been with her through thick and thin.

She loved them, without a shadow of a doubt. 

And she would grow to love Cheryl, she was sure of that. 

**Absolutely positive.**

 


	11. Strip Tease

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here you go ladies and gents, finally the smut I know you've all been waiting for and a deliberately understated crucial scene in here that has a lot to do with future chapters, enjoy!

**i.**

Handcuffs clipped into place and cots were shuffled into the far side of the dingy, damp, and horridly lonesome basement of Cheryl’s manor.

Sweet Pea huffed and rolled John further into the incredibly uncomfortable straw built excuse of a bed, the handcuffs which were clipped to a pipe that was no longer in use.

Cheryl glanced between the man, his bed, and the four walls of the room that he would be living in, right under Cheryl’s nose, probably in more security than he had ever been used to even if he was a hostage at her house. In ways, she was probably doing him a favor.

She didn’t want to think of it that way though.

The last thing she wanted was to make this man’s life anything less than a living hell.

“What do we do about the wound?” Fangs asked quietly, looking down at the bandana they had tied just above the wound on John’s leg, slowing but not completely stopping the flow of blood.

Toni gulped, Cheryl swallowed harshly.

She knew how to deal with bullet wounds.  
  
She had studied up on it after her brother had been shot into the afterlife. She wanted to know, she had garnered a morbid fascination to know whether or not she could have done anything to help him if she had just _gone back and checked._

Despite her high IQ, her emotional trauma forced her to take many weeks before she realized that she couldn’t have done anything for a bullet straight through the center of his head.

“Well first of all, check the wound,” Cheryl ordered shakily.

All three of the Serpents got down to work immediately, trying their best to roll John into a position where they could easily access the sight.

“Okay,” Toni breathed, looking down with a ghastly pale expression. “What next?”

“Is there an exit wound?” Cheryl pressed forth, trying her best to remember everything she had learned so long ago.

“Yeah,” Fangs sighed, his fingers coming away bloody after he reached around to feel for the other end of the wound. “The bullet left his body, Red.”

Cheryl’s shoulders relaxed as she nodded, looking back and forth.

“That’s- that’s good. If it left his body and he’s still breathing it means I didn’t hit anything severe. Toni, come up with me, we need to go get some gauze to wrap firmly around his wound before he bleeds out and that should be good enough until I can get my family doctor to see him,” Cheryl spoke quietly, mostly to herself but also addressing her girlfriend in a feverish manner.

It didn’t go unnoticed that Toni exchanged an anxious look with her best friends, _brothers,_ before following Cheryl up the stairs and out of the quarters.

They began a walk, a brisk pace set mainly by Cheryl, in complete silence as Toni wrung her wrists anxiously.

_Come on, Cher, say something to her._

**_Anything._ **

But nothing came out.

They continued to trot awkwardly beside each other until Cheryl heard an unusually loud huff and discovered that she was now walking all by herself.

“Wha- TT?”

She turned around and met her girlfriend’s troubled gaze, standing in place a few paces behind.

“Talk to me, Cheryl. What’s up with you?”

**Damn it.**

_She knows._

_Can’t you ever just keep anything to yourself?_

Cheryl grit her teeth together and forced a smile.

“Nothing, babe! I’m fine!”

_Too much, she knows you’re lying. Why are you faltering now when lying is all you’ve known?_

“Look, Blossom,” Toni sighed, looking tired as ever while rubbing her fingers across her temple. “I don’t want to push you but I don’t want to make a habit of not telling each other things. If we’re going to be together, I need to know what’s going on up there.”

Guilt settled in Cheryl’s abdomen at the action, why couldn’t she ever **_not_** disappoint people?

“I’m sorry, Toni,” she pouted. Her voice strained, thickened and tightened by her throat muscles constricting. “I don’t- I don’t mean to be a nuisance.”

Toni shook her head and stepped forward, enveloping Cheryl’s hands in her own as gently as she could.

“You’re _not,_ but we’re literally tying a man to a pipe in your basement while he’s bleeding rather profusely. If you’re uncomfortable you can tell me.”

The ginger turned back towards the kitchen where the medicine cabinet was, beginning her walk once more but slower and accommodating Toni’s speed next to her.

“I just thought… I thought that when I finally got my hands on him, I would be _free,”_ Cheryl admitted quietly.

**_Go on, Little One, you’re doing amazing._ **

_Speak your heart’s_ **_truth._ **

“I thought I would break him down slowly, a mile of his pain for a centimeter of mine-”

**_There you go._ **

“- but that’s not what’s happening. He’s living in my basement, hurt but pretty safe. This might be the best living situation he’s ever been in.”

Cheryl’s shoulders heaved up and down

It pained her physically to speak the truth into existence.

**This is what you need.**

**_Isn’t it?_ **

“You’re upset because you don’t think he’s getting what he deserves,” Toni finally drew the conclusion, and Cheryl sighed at the little mercy.

She wouldn’t have to say it herself.

She just nodded.

“I’ll sock him out for you if you want,” Toni admitted with a shrug.

Despite herself, Cheryl laughed.

**_She is your savior._ **

_I know._

“Thank you TT but unfortunately it is poor etiquette to kick a man while he’s down,” Cheryl tutted, finally reaching her lavishly done kitchen, reaching into the cabinet farthest from the rest of them and pulling out gauze.

“This is going to hold all of his blood?” Toni asked skeptically, raising a drawn eyebrow.

“You’ll be amazed how much you can do with a little gauze, Topaz,” Cheryl grinned and then pressed a quick kiss to Toni’s lips.

Toni smiled into it, grinning like a fool ( _in love)._

Cheryl didn’t dare to think like that just yet though.

“Come, Toni, we have a mongrel waiting in our basement for basic needs,” Cheryl bossed, and walked away, not missing the way Toni bit her lip. **  
**

**ii.**

By the time the white gauze was wrapped securely around his wounded kneecap, squeezing pressure gently, stopping the flow of blood quite efficiently, Cheryl and the Serpents were exhausted.

She sat back against the cool wall of the basement and leaned her head against the material, sweat matting ginger locks to the nape of her neck.

The bare hum of Toni leading the boys out of her house was background noise when her eyes fell shut and sleep begged her to submit.

But **of course-**

Two huffs _and a puff later-_

“Oh for fucks sake, what the fuck- Blossom?”

Her fingers curled gracefully and powerfully into fists at the _aggravating_ sound of the man’s voice.

“ _Blossom._ What the fuck are you a _deaf_ dyke now? Answer me bitch,” he spat, and Cheryl’s eyes flew open.

She would not take this.

Not today, not **ever.**

“You’re in my basement, John, be a little grateful, will you?” She hummed pseudo-pleasantly, standing up and dusting the dirt off of her skirt.

He growled aggressively and moved to get off the bed, when Cheryl assumed the pain in his leg finally caught up to him and he fell back with a startled gasp of pain, the chained hand falling back against the pipe with a _clang._

“God fucking _damn it,_ that hurts,” he hissed.

A sick grin twisted her gut, but refused to show on her face. She would never let herself get that deranged.

“It’s payback,” Cheryl curtly responded, walking up to him in brisk steps. “Through your head would’ve been a more… _quick_ solution to my problems but you deserve to rot like this."

A strangled laugh dropped from John’s mouth as he doubled over in pain, still amused nonetheless.

“You know… you claim to not be like the rest of your clan. That you’re higher than the rest of them just because you’re a girl who like girls, because you’re not classist like they were, but that’s only half the battle, ya know?” John cackled through his pain.

_Don’t listen to him._

_You are_ **_not_ ** _like them._

**Yes you are.**

“I am _nothing_ like the monstrosity of an ancestry that I have descended from,” she growled, stepping closer to him, eyes alight with a rage induced fire.

“But that’s where you’re wrong, sweetheart. Everyone thinks they aren’t, until they are,” he winced in pain but grinned over it anyways. “Look at you, tying wounded old men to water pipes in basements. _Sadistic.”_

Her heart pummeled her rib cage, relentlessly banging up her chest.

**She was not like them.**

**She only wanted** **_justice._ **

That could be achieved without being a _monster,_ right?

**_Right?_ **

“But unlike them,” Cheryl held her head high, refusing to let this sorry excuse of a man see her at her lowest. “I do it only to the people who deserve it. You have hurt not only Heather and I, but _Toni,_ that beautiful absolutely amazing woman who is not only your niece but also happens to be my girlfriend. You forced her to suffer, and now I’m going to do the same to you.”

Her eyes narrowed, anger clouding the edges of her vision as she began to imagine, over and over again, what he could have possibly done to the one woman who meant the most to her right now.

Only to then notice, that John was no longer looking at her, but over her shoulder.

Before she even had the chance to turn around, a warm, strong, and lithe body was pressed to her back, wrapping an arm around her waist.

“Gee babe, I wish we didn’t have to tie my uncle in your basement for me to hear such hot words fall from your mouth,” Toni joked, looking directly into Cheryl’s eyes, as if John wasn’t _right there_ watching them.

_He doesn’t exist._

_Not to you._

_Not to_ **_her._ **

**_He is no one._ **

“Mm, in a minute Toni,” Cheryl purred before looking back to John.

Disgustingly enough, he was _enjoying it,_ seeing his own niece who was half his age, practically a child in comparison, be verbally intimate with her girlfriend. It set Cheryl’s nerves on _fire._

“As for _you,_ you absolute piece of _shit,”_ Cheryl smiled, almost sickeningly sweet. “It’s time for some lights out, don’t you think, Toni?”

Beside her, her girlfriend chuckled and cracked her knuckles.

“I totally agree, Cher.”

**iii.**

“Babe I’m sorry but I have to disagree.”

“What? _Why?_ It was a well deserved ending,” Cheryl pouted.

“ _Seriously?_ You think Emily and Alison deserved to get together? Alison emotionally abused that girl for _years,_ she practically used Emily to get out of whatever shithole she was in,” Toni argued.

“But she spent their remaining time together to make up for it,” Cheryl pointed out, reaching over to grab the remote and pause the TV on which _Pretty Little Liars_ had been playing for the last few minutes.

“No, okay, _no,”_ Toni shook her head laughing, grabbing the remote from Cheryl and swiftly exiting the show. “I cannot watch TV shows with you where we’re going to be arguing about something back and forth.”

“But _TT,”_ Cheryl whined like a child, pouting hoping her girlfriend would give in like she always does. “I wanted to watch that!”

“Yeah well, we’ll find something else,” Toni cooed, wrapping an arm more firmly around the shoulders of her girlfriend who was resting her head on Toni’s chest. “Like _this,_ Orange is the New Black. This seems good.”

Cheryl rolled her eyes.

“You just want to watch porn.”

Toni gasped.

“That show is _not_ just porn, in fact it handles a lot of actual issues in the real world,” Toni huffed, and then added for good measure. “Unlike that stupid show of yours.”

“Oh, the stupid show that you seemed to know everything about?” Cheryl quipped, rolling her eyes.

Toni grinned but said nothing more about that.

“Besides,” her head turned to Cheryl, a mischievous grin on her face. “If I wanted porn I could just have the _real_ thing.”

Cheryl could barely hide the gasp building in her throat before she was flipped onto her back swiftly and Toni was straddling her hips, grinning down at her with a kind of sexual ferocity that had Cheryl _throbbing._

_“Toni-”_

“Shhh,” Toni quieted, leaning down and ghosting her lips over Cheryl’s plump red ones. “Don’t talk sweetheart, just enjoy.”

And who was Cheryl to disobey?

Toni’s lips barely dusted over her own, teasing, before descending to her neck and ravaging it like a hungry beast. A vampire in her own right.

Cheryl’s back arched with a gasp, fingers sliding forth into Toni’s hair, only to be deterred with a grumble of descent. Smaller but equally as strong hands gripped her wrists and pulled them out of pink hair, pinning them back onto the bed on either side of Cheryl’s head.

“No touching, babe,” Toni patronized, and Cheryl’s rage bubbled at the tone but turned her on at the same time. She hated being told that she _couldn’t_ do something, but here Toni was, doing exactly that in the sexiest voice, and turning her on.

How fucking dare she.

Just as she was about to open her mouth and object, Toni’s mouth descended hot onto hers, their tongues intertwining like a rough and rogue invasion that Cheryl was anything but opposed to.

Groans and whimpers spilled from Cheryl’s mouth into Toni’s like a person impoverished of all sexual acts. She grew hotter than she would ever admit to Toni verbally, even though she was sure the other girl was more than aware of it when Cheryl gripped scantily clad shoulders and dug her nails into the girl’s back.

When they parted with a gasp, Toni looked down at Cheryl with eyes that would burn the girl bright forever, lust, want, _need,_ and a little bit of arrogance spilling forth from every inch.

She wanted to wipe that look off her fucking face once and for all.

For a brief breath stilling moment, Cheryl leaned forward and encased Toni’s bottom lip within her own, holding the plump body part hostage between her teeth, and _sucked._

A high whine, a feminine whimper, squeaked in Toni’s throat at the action, eyes falling shut.

Cheryl’s pride grew tenfold.

And then, ever so slowly, Cheryl pulled back, releasing her girlfriend’s lower lip _inch by inch,_ almost painfully so, her teeth dragging over it so there was no choice other than for the body part to swell with a rush of blood. Bruised and battered by Cheryl’s willing teeth.

It left Cheryl’s mouth with a _pop,_ not loud enough to ever reach outside the confines of their personal space, but loud enough that Toni’s eyes flew open and widened with a wild look.

Cheryl pulled a stealthy smirk at the look, feeling more than proud of herself.

That is, until Toni’s brows furrowed and she climbed off the bed.

Suddenly, panic filled her chest.

What had she done wrong?

**_God, Cheryl, again?_ **

What have you done **now?**

“Ton-”

“You think you’re so good at this game, Blossom?” Toni growled, looking so far gone in lust that Cheryl could not even _remotely_ see the girl who had been arguing with her over TV shows just moments ago.

“I didn’t mean to upset you-” Cheryl began to grovel, still not quite understanding their current dynamic.

Toni shook her head, eyes softening in the corners, but still wild with want.

“You haven’t upset me, love,” Toni whispered, stepping towards the bed momentarily, Cheryl fighting to keep her eyes off of the bra and underwear that Toni was donning so carelessly. “You’ve _challenged_ me.”

Cheryl’s mouth hung open, completely dry, all the lubrication in her body traveling _south._

Toni continued.

“And _I,_ do not back down from a challenge, Miss Blossom,” she stepped away from the bed, and into Cheryl’s closet. “You really think you can get away with teasing me like that? As if we both don’t know who _really_ tops here?”

Cheryl gulped heavily.

“I was looking around a few hours ago, ya know,” Toni hummed, seemingly getting off track as she reached into the closet with dainty fingers. “And I just _happened_ to notice, that you seem to have quite the _array_ of lingerie.”

Her eyes widened.

**Fuck.**

**Oh fuck.**

A black lace lingerie set, full with a garter belt and high heels, rested on a lone finger of Toni’s as she balanced the tip of the hanger over her phalange and pulled out the outfit.

“Now,” Toni sighed, almost disappointedly. “We _did_ have enough time to fit in a quickie but… considering it would be our first time I want it to go a little differently, I would’ve stopped it anyways. But thankfully, I didn’t have to put the damper, you did.”

“ _Damper-”_ Cheryl startled, ready to argue, only to be interrupted again.

Toni tutted and raised a finger to silence her.

“You tried to act like _you_ were in charge, despite being the _little bottom_ you are,” Toni spoke quietly, dangerously. “So, you’re going to be punished.”

“Toni,” Cheryl groaned, despite the fact that she was still throbbing with want. None of this was  making it any easier on her.

“Don’t groan at me baby,” Toni laughed, lightening up a bit, finally. “I have a… job, to do tonight,” she continued, the innuendo clear. Cheryl knew exactly _what_ job she meant. “If you really want me as bad as you claim…”

She let the sentence hang for a second, eyes locking hungrily with Cheryl’s.

“You’ll come take what’s yours.”

Cheryl’s breathing harshened, brain banging back and forth in her brain.

And then Toni trotted out of the room, her hips swinging more than usual, lingerie still hanging from her index finger.

_Fuck._

**Fuck.**

Cheryl Blossom was **_fucked._ **

**iv.**

Cheryl waited impatiently by her bedroom door, breathing anxious breaths in and out.

She wasn’t waiting for anyone, she was just waiting on _herself._

Toni had left for the Velvet Cabaret an hour or so ago, not letting Cheryl see her in that delicious black lingerie that she hid so well under a giant jacket.

She had kissed Cheryl goodbye, a sweet memento of her affection, and reminded her to not be late.

There was a lot riding on the expectation that Cheryl would see her girlfriend perform in that godforsaken costume.

_Literally._

But she could not for the love of god, her herself to move out from her bedroom door, from which she had a perfect view of the oak entrance leading to the basement.

The basement where John Topaz was quietly biding his time.

She didn’t know if he was still knocked out, Toni had landed quite a good knuckle sandwich across the side of his face and sent him into a deep sleep.

(It amazed and horrified her that Toni’s knuckles didn’t bruise directly after.)

But was he still asleep? Or was he just waiting for Cheryl to leave before he skillfully got loose like the bandit he was? Waiting for Cheryl to leave until he snuck into the rest of her house like a crook, stealing her possessions and her wealth, and then waiting for the couple to come back home where he would then take them out one by one.

It was safe to say Cheryl’s mind had gone into overdrive.

Panic mode, even.

But she could not _move._

 **Damn it, Cheryl, she’s** **_waiting_ ** **for you.**

_Go, be with her._

_Let go of the demons in your past._

Cheryl winced and looked to the door again.

Demons in her **present.**

A _ping_ coming from the inside of her coat pocket brought her back to the present.

 **Top Me Topaz:** _im on in 15, you coming babe?_

Cheryl held her breath and fought out the guilt in her stomach. Even through a fucking text she could hear the slight anxiety in Toni’s tone.

 **Cheryl Blossom:** _on my way TT, don’t worry :)_

And her decision was made. She could not stand around here, thinking of what could happen, or what _might_ become a possibility if she was to leave. She had to go, for her own sake even if it wasn’t for Toni’s.   
**v.**

Exiting her manor was the best decision she could’ve made.

By the time Cheryl made it to the Cabaret she was a little short on time, five minutes remaining before Toni got on, and she would have to fight to find a good vantage point.

As always, there were bodies dancing back and forth under the glistening light of the dark studio, a place that Cheryl could never quite understand how her mother had been so lucky as to land for such a cheap price.

Then again, maybe she had done _more_ than just pay in money.

Either way, Cheryl wasn’t here to think about that.

She was here to think about Toni, her girlfriend, her performer. The public attraction of tonight for which the sales of alcohol had gone up many folds and filled her mother’s bank accounts with countless pretty pennies.

Cheryl pushed down the memories, urging herself to focus once again on who she was here for.

There had been far too many distractions tonight, when there should’ve been only one person on her mind.

She had finally managed to snag a spot up near the center stage, and even to her good luck, an empty lush sofa _directly_ in front of the pole. God must’ve been smiling down at her through all of the trials and tribulations because Cheryl took the seat with a grateful sigh, sinking into the admittedly comfortable material. She didn’t have much to credit her mother for, but the woman _did_ have impeccable taste even when it came to the cheapest of materials, it was just a Blossom boon, she supposed.

A waiter swung by, holding a glass of some fun looking drink that Cheryl didn’t even blink twice before snatching off the platter and downing it in seconds.

**_Sweet relief._ **

Whatever the alcohol was, it washed Cheryl’s body in a warm glow, making her worries lift almost immediately, a silly grin on her face as she gazed down lovingly into the cup which was now empty.

_Thank fuck._

_I needed this._

“Hey sweetheart.”

Cheryl’s hand gripped the cup in her hand tighter, whatever momentary relief she had garnered subsiding as quickly as it had come. She did not appreciate sleazy old men whispering in her ear while she patiently awaited the any-second-arrival of her girlfriend on that stage.

“What do you want?” Cheryl snarled, turning to look at, of course, an aging man with surprisingly lush amounts of white hair on his head.

He wore an almost genuine smile on his face, skin so worn by what looked like countless hours in the sun that it took on a leathery look, crinkling in the corners of his eyes when he smiled. He looked… familiar, but if Cheryl could only barely put her finger on what he reminded her of in broad daylight in a sober state, there was no way she could be able to connect the dots in her current state.

“Oh nothing,” he smiled, waving his hand and slowly sipping a drink that looked like apple juice but smelled like nothing that should ever be served to a child. “I didn’t mean to come off as a sleaze, darling, I’m sorry.”

And something about his apology struck Cheryl as genuine.

_Something._

She wished she could tell **what.**

“No it’s- it’s alright,” Cheryl nodded, skeptically sinking back into her chair, not even realizing that her posture had become rigid. “ _I’m_ sorry, I don’t usually expect people to be anything but disgustingly self driven and sexually amplified in these places,” she found herself apologizing back.

The man smiled, lips pulling the leathery skin over his cheeks once more as he settled into a chair beside her, seemingly intent on wanting to talk to her.

“I understand,” he motioned towards the stage. “Not exactly the best setting for normal conversations.”

At that, she managed to smile.

Her nerves were still worn down from the alcohol, just slightly on alert in the presence of a stranger who seemed to be making her cold heart warmer every second.

“Although, I _do_ have a question for you,” he leaned in, eyeing Cheryl, but not in the way that made her uncomfortable. Just curious. “You seem like you come here a lot… do you happen to know a Toni Topaz?”

Cheryl stiffened.

“Why? What do you want from her?"

His eyes widened and he desperately tried to backtrack.

“ _No!_ No- I’m not here to hurt her,” he assured rapidly. “I’m just curious. It’s my first time in this town, well _state_ really, and everyone recommended me to this spot on this specific night for that specific dancer if I wanted to relax, I’m just wondering if there’s anything special about her.”

Oh.

_Oh._

Was Toni really _that_ in demand here? That people from around the _country_ came to see her?

Cheryl’s eyes wandered subconsciously through the room and it was true, the club seemed ten times more packed than it was on any other night, and that was saying something considering attendance was never _really_ light in the strip joint.

“She’s…” Cheryl looked back at the man who looked a strange kind of eager. Not lustful or hungry, _innocently_ eager. How **strange.** “She’s good, yeah. She’s actually my girlfriend.”

The confession sat heavy on her tongue but lightened her heart.

She had never said that out loud to a stranger before, a _girlfriend,_ a hot smokeshow of a _girlfriend._

Cheryl fought the tipsy smile rising on her face.

The man beside her raised his eyebrows, an amused smile curling the corners of his lips.

“ _Girlfriend,_ huh? I never thought…” he smiled and looked down at his hands.

Cheryl’s eyebrows knit together and she pursed her lips. The look on his face was far from homophobic, but his words sounded distinctly like they could’ve had that tone…. Except they _didn't._

Who the fuck was this man?

“You never thought what?” Cheryl asked, intrigued.

He looked back up from his hands again, eye squinting, and Cheryl felt scrutinized, like he was trying to read everything about her before she disappeared on him. Like she was the fragment to a missing piece of his life.

Finally, he shook his head.

“Nothing, sweetheart. Nothing.”

Cheryl opened her mouth, brows furrowed together, still fucking _confused._

And then the lights dimmed.

Her attention snapped forth to the stage, a single red spotlight dripping red and spilling over the edges and pooling over the closest audience members’ shoes. A hauntingly sexy beat dropped in the background, and Cheryl was glad she was sitting or her knees would’ve given out entirely.

Out of the shadows, kind of like a phoenix rising from the ashes in all its fiery glory, Toni Topaz stepped out from behind the curtains.

Cheryl’s breath caught in her throat.  
  
She had seen Toni dance before, but never had their eyes been locked _so_ intensely while she danced, never did she have the knowledge that Toni was _hers_ only and only hers behind all the glitz and glamour.

And by _god,_ the scanty pieces of lingerie on her body were not helping Cheryl with her serious case of arousal.

The black garter belt strapped sexily against her tanned thigh, trapping her within a mesh of materials that Cheryl could not _wait_ to rip off of her.

Even if it was her own expensive lingerie.

Probably even a limited edition.

But you know what else was really limited?

 **Toni**.

There was only one of her and Cheryl was willing to sacrifice all the limited edition lingerie in the world for her.

Toni dropped to her knees in front of Cheryl, arms outstretched, cat crawling as the hoots and hollers from around them grew to a ruckus.

A smirk adorned Toni’s face as the music dipped and so did her body, hip rolling against the glass stage, practically riding it right there in front of everyone, for _everyone_ to see.

From beside Cheryl, the man she had been previously talking to have an uncomfortable cough, but she ignored it.

She **_wanted_ ** Toni, so goddamn bad.

She wanted everyone in there to know Toni was _her_ girlfriend. They could stare and leer and hoot and holler all they wanted to, but at the end of the day?

Toni was coming home to _her._

Pride, possession, a bit of jealousy, and that tremulous dangerous four lettered L-word came to her mind.

By the time Toni finished sexily picking up large bills from around the stage, tucking them into different parts of her suit, she was back to facing Cheryl.

“You’re mine,” the redhead growled from her seat, wondering if she had been loud enough.

From the resulting smirk on Toni’s face lathered in seductive wonder, Cheryl assumed she had.

Toni backed away, crawling onto her haunches, ass snug against her calves, running her hands up and down her body, over her clothed center, her chest, her _neck-_

God, Cheryl had wanted to ravage that neck since she first laid eyes-

Suddenly, a voice overtook the speakers, and Cheryl’s eyes widened.

_No way-_

Toni leaned into a microphone piece clipped surreptitiously to the garment over her collarbone.

_“How are we doing tonight, ladies and gentlemen?”_

Toni was practically purring, turning everyone in the room on with just the power of her voice, a voice that Cheryl was fortunate enough to hear not only when she was attempting to be seductive but when she was breaking down and when she was dismal and when she was joyful, angry, hurt, _pleased-_

The chorus of   _“aye!”_ that went around as soon as Toni spoke had Cheryl gritting her teeth.

That was _her_ girlfriend-

How _dare they_ -

“You know I’ve got a special someone in the crowd tonight,” Toni finally began again, dangerous brown eyes meeting Cheryl’s. “She’s sort of the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

More hoots and hollers.

God this girl was _nuts-_

“And I think it would make her _very_ upset if I didn’t give her a personal treatment, right?”

**_No way-_ **

She wasn’t **that** crazy, right?

 **_Right_ ** _?_

Cheryl watched in subdued attraction as Toni’s chin came up from her chest, away from the microphone, at the even _louder_ screams of approval from the crowd.

“Well the people have spoken, Cheryl Blossom, come on up.”

If the rest of the people cheered, Cheryl didn’t hear it.

In fact, she couldn’t hear much of _anything_ really, over the deafening silence in her own ears. All she could hear was Toni’s heels clicking down the catwalk towards her, the slippery peel of glossed lips detaching from whitened teeth as Toni smiled down at her, joints cracking as she reached down for her girlfriend.

“Come on, baby,” Toni finally whispered, one hand over the mic, other outstretched to Cheryl.

Cheryl didn’t know when she nodded, or when she made her way up the stage trailing behind Toni, because the next thing she knew she was seated facing the audience.

On the catwalk.

Her girlfriend’s black lace panties right in front of her face.

Cheryl swallowed thickly.

Very suddenly, Toni dropped into her lap, straddling her, grinding back and forth provocatively, inciting those feelings in Cheryl’s loins that she hadn’t felt in a _long_ time.

 _“Toni,”_ Cheryl groaned, reaching to grab her hips, only to find her hands being dominantly slapped away.

“Ah,” Toni commented, her voice lilting condescendingly. “No touching, baby.”

A low whine forced itself out of Cheryl’s mouth as the music picked up and Toni grinded faster and harder.

The screaming in the club got _louder-_

Toni began panting, her hips thrusting almost erratically now-

 _No_ **_fucking_ ** _way._

“You feel _so_ good, Cheryl,” Toni whimpered, her hips moving of their own accord most clearly now, hands gripping shirt clad shoulders, fake acrylics digging deep.

“Toni I-”

“-are going to sit here and _watch,”_ Toni panted, flipping her hair from onside to the other winking at people standing around the catwalk with disgusting grins on their faces. “As I get myself off on you.”

She _wouldn’t dare._

Or **would** she?

As it turned out, she would.

Toni discreetly brought Cheryl’s hand to her covered clit, whimpering scantily, like a desperate _bitch_ in heat-

Cheryl gasped, her thoughts dirtied, as she plunged forward, qualms forgotten, pressing directly into Toni’s clit.

“ _Ah!”_ Toni gasped, her voice high and pitchy.

Cheryl rubbed harder, _determined_ to give Toni the orgasm she was so _goddamn_ **_desperate_ ** _for-_

“Guys! Hey!”

Cheryl’s eyes flew open as she pulled her hand away from Toni’s clit, club lights flooding her vision; not the usual red lights Toni danced under, the normal lights.

Toni’s set had finished.

And everyone was milling around them silently, some faces pulled into long frowns, others in awe, most in _desire._

Her eyes snapped back to Toni whose neck had grown a haughty red, in embarrassment or lust- Cheryl couldn’t tell.

She hastily climbed off of Cheryl’s lap on shaky legs, the redhead following after her and pressing a hand into the sweaty tanned back of her girlfriend for extra support.

“Sorry guys,” Toni laughed awkwardly, tucking a lock of pink hair behind her ear modestly. “Show’s over.”

A bunch of chorused groans rose from the depths of the crowd, everyone beginning to move again, flocking to the bar and other dancers.

Toni turned back to look at Cheryl once she was sure everyone was done with them, a guilty emotion flickering in her chocolate eyes.

“So…” Cheryl grinned, knocking their foreheads together affectionately. “Need a minute?”

Toni groaned and rolled her eyes, pouting and crossing her arms over her chest.

Cheryl didn’t imagine standing around in lingerie was too comfortable now that the mood had lifted.

“I’m _so_ embarrassed, Cheryl,” Toni grumbled, more upset than the redhead had realized.

 _“Hey-”_ Cheryl frowned, reaching forward and cupping Toni’s face in her hands.

Only to be interrupted by someone coughing loudly and _obviously_ beside them.

Cheryl rolled her eyes but pulled away from her upset girlfriend, to look no other than Veronica Lodge dead in the eyes.

“What is it, Ronnie?”

“What _is_ it?” Veronica scoffed with a playful smile. “What it _is_ is that, you two almost just fucked on that stage. Like… out right humping. In front of _everyone,_ are you guys _alright_?”

Toni grumbled again behind Cheryl.

The redhead bit her lip, a little embarrassed. Admittedly it wasn’t the smartest choice she’d ever made, but Toni had been _right_ there, basically begging to be fucked. How could she have denied her what she wanted?

“Have you never been a little adventurous in your sad sheltered life, Veronica?” Cheryl simmered.

Veronica’s eyebrow twitched upwards.

“Sheathe your claws, mama lion,” the unamused tan girl rolled her eyes. “I was just _asking…_ but now get out of here before you guys try anything again. You won’t get paid for it, it’ll be a waste.”

Cheryl narrowed her eyes but turned back to Toni, who looked ready to _cry._

“Baby?” Cheryl tried again.

“Let’s just go home, Cheryl,” Toni practically pleaded, and the redhead sighed, defeated.

“Okay, TT, whatever you want.”

 **vi**.

By the time the couple reached their destination, Thornhill Manor in all its glory, Toni had resorted to a disquieting silence.

Cheryl’s mind raced everyday from Sunday trying to figure out where she’d gone wrong.

She drove her car into the garage of the mansion, parking beside the ten other red colored cars she adored.

(Cheryl wondered if she would ever add a red motorcycle to the collection.)

“We’re here, TT,” Cheryl whispered, treading lightly.

_A sigh._

One _pained_ sigh, and Toni lifted herself lethargically from the passenger seat.

Cheryl followed after her like a kicked puppy.

They remained quiet, shuffling around each other like magnets of the same pole, never touching, always swerving away at the last minute.

It wasn’t until Cheryl was settled and ready in bed, a cloud hung over her head, waiting for her girlfriend to return from the bathroom, that Toni finally broke the silence.

Pink curls peeped from beside the door and Cheryl held her breath.

“I’m sorry,” they blurted at the same time.

“Wait,” Toni squinted, her eyes questioning. “What the hell are _you_ sorry for?”

 _Now_ Cheryl was confused.

What had Toni been avoiding her for if she had nothing to be sorry for?

“I- I thought you’re mad at me,” Cheryl whispered, watching as Toni slowly walked towards her. “That you were mad at me because I couldn’t control myself. Or- or something like that.”

Toni’s eyes softened impossibly, almost scrambling to reach forward and grasp Cheryl’s face between soft but calloused hands.

 _“No,_ Cheryl, god, no! I was never mad at you,” Toni urged, pressing their foreheads together. “I could never be _mad_ at you for something like that. I was mad at myself. Embarrassed. _Guilty.”_

“What? Why? Toni nothing that happened without my consent,” Cheryl whispered, cupping the soft strong jaw with delicate posh _rich_ hands.

“I know,” Toni sighed tiredly. “I _know._ But I lost control… and that shouldn’t have happened. I don’t want our first time to be like that, you know? Crazy… rabid, or manic, like I was on that stage. I want us to be _us.”_

Cheryl smiled sadly, leaning up and connecting their lips together eagerly.

Toni responded, hesitant at first, gaining confidence with each passing swipe of her tongue, licking and sucking, _begging._

“You are _so_ perfect, Toni Topaz,” Cheryl gasped against soft plush pink lips as the shorter girl pushed her back onto the bed, straddling her hips once more.

She felt the girl chuckle sexily into her neck.

 _God_ she was too fucking much.

Cheryl remembered the first time she had ever engaged in a sexual act with a girl, the frisky prevalent _danger_ of it, making her toes curl with pleasure. That had been at the mere age of twelve, when she had kissed a random girl at a frat party she had snuck into with the assistance of… _Heather._

Later, hours past the kiss in the night when she snuck back to her bed, she had brushed off the pleasure as an adrenaline rush of denying her mother

_Rebelling._

But now, with Toni pressed against her, her stomach bursting in butterflies, heart squeezing and contracting, center throbbing, she _knew_ it was more than that.

She supposed she always had.

Toni’s hand slipping beneath her shirt brought her back with a gasp.

Not that she had gone anywhere to begin with.

Toni’s hot mouth descended over soft, easily bruising, alabaster skin, drawing moans out of her in cahoots with panted breaths. Her hips bucked upwards, red nails clawing desperately at the nape of Toni’s neck. “Tell me, Cheryl,” Toni murmured, lips skimming across protruding collarbones. “Did you _like_ everyone seeing that you were mine?”

Her core clenched.

“That they could all _watch_ but like hell were they ever going to _touch.”_

Cheryl whimpered and desperately searched for relief, one hand traveling to her own center, only to have it grabbed and pinned over her head.

“Uh uh, Cherry,” Toni persisted, Cheryl could practically hear the smirk in her voice. “Use your words. _Tell me.”_

She remained silent, fighting it against her better judgement. Her _control-_

Toni sucked harshly, bruising her for days. Her tongue lathered and swept over the spot, and then teeth set again, she would coax an answer out of Cheryl tonight.

“Toni…”

“Answer me, Blossom.”

Years ago, many years ago, Cheryl had learned to keep her control in her palm , rigid fisted and unyielding. To hold it over others like _God._ To show them she was no less of a fiend than the omnipresent wisdom holding presence that people put their belief in.

But here and now, with Toni’s hand pressing dangerously over her belly button and lips suctioning over any inch of skin her mouth could find, Cheryl could give less of a damn about it.

And just like that, Cheryl relinquished her power.

“Yes,” she sighed, Toni smirked against her skin.

“Yes _what?”_

 _“Yes_ I liked having them watch- _fuck-_ watch us,” Cheryl gasped and her back arched as Toni’s fingers found the insides of her thighs and spread her legs.

“Yeah I fucking bet you did,” Toni laughed lowly, practically chuckling to herself. “You wanted to spread and fuck me in front of anyone, didn’t you, darling?”

Cheryl whined, Toni slotted her hips between long ivory legs.

“God, everyone in there knew, Cheryl,” _kiss after kiss up her thigh._ “Everyone in there knew…”

**Kiss.**

**After.**

**Kiss.**

Cheryl grew hotter and wetter, no longer monitoring the sounds leaving her mouth. She didn’t have a single care in the world other than Toni’s mouth on her thighs, _so_ close to where she needed her.

“You’re a little _fucking_ exhibitionist, aren’t you, Cheryl?” Toni commented then, breathing hotly over the middle of her legs.

Cheryl wanted to _strangle_ her.

The thought turned her on.

How fucked up was she?

“I.. I don’t know, TT,” Cheryl panted, two seconds away from begging. “Just fuck me already.”

“Don’t be impatient love,” Toni smirked, looking up at Cheryl from between her legs. “We’ve got all night.”

“If you tease me all night-”

Toni tutted right in the middle of Cheryl’s angry speech, kissing her way back up the girl’s body, taking with her the shirt on the redhead’s body. The girl rose to the occasion of course, letting Toni slide the article off her body.

“In here,” Toni began again, moving to take her own shirt off and revealing no black lingerie… in fact, nothing _at all._ “In here _I_ am the boss, and you…” she glanced down hungrily at Cheryl who couldn't move her damn eyes from Toni’s fucking _chest._  “ _You_ work for  _me_.”

Cheryl had had enough of this.

She could care less about her _power_ or control or goddamn reputation right now.

She needed to be **fucked.**

“Then make me your _bitch_ , Toni.”

That seemed to do the trick, fucking _finally._

A flame flickered in Toni’s eyes like a hunger Cheryl had yet to see and suddenly all of their clothes were flying off of their bodies, scattering around the room as Toni placed Cheryl directly back on the bed, positioning themselves perfectly where Cheryl _knew_ the headboard would start banging the wall.

Toni’s heated kiss trapped Cheryl’s mouth, moaning and swapping spit, their tongues wrestling half in joust and half in a genuine struggle for dominance before Toni’s hands were suddenly at Cheryl’s waist, flipping her onto her stomach.

Cheryl gasped at the motion.

She felt **debauched** , so _dirty-_

Toni pressed her naked, already slightly sweaty but soft, body against Cheryl’s back, palming her tits.

Cheryl let out a low moan at the feeling, rocking backwards, trying to relieve pressure, trying to gain some kind of leverage _anywhere._ But she knew Toni won’t give it to her, not now.

“Easy, love,” Toni laughed, amusement in her voice, annoying and turning Cheryl on at the same time. “You want to be fucked that badly?”

Cheryl whimpered and nodded.

“Fair enough.”

And before Cheryl could process what was going on, a loud _smack_ rang through her room as Toni’s open hand fell across her ass in a powerful slap.

Cheryl gasped and rocked forward, eyes flying open.

**_Fuck-_ **

That had been the last thing she was expecting.

“You like that, baby?” Toni growled in her ear, fisting Cheryl’s hair in her hand and pulling gently.

“Y-yes-”

_Another slap._

Cheryl whined lowly, she could practically feel the juices running down her thighs now, her hole sporadically clenching around nothing, eager to just be _fucked_ into her goddamn mattress.

And then _god_ -

Without **any** warning, Toni flipped Cheryl back over and grabbed the backs of her thighs, lifting them and wrapping long ivory legs around a lithe tanned waist, and two long fingers plunged mercilessly inside of Cheryl.

She _gasped,_ her moan loud and breathy and everything she wasn’t expecting herself to be.

She had never been _feral_ in bed, but Toni brought just that out of her.

Trained to be the sexual fiend that Toni Topaz was, Cheryl found herself on the cusp of an orgasm within _seconds._ Nimble, relaxed, and fairly advantaged fingers working dutifully inside of her as Cheryl’s back arched.

She could _taste_ the climax-

Toni mouthed at her neck, sucking, **biting-**

Cheryl’s toes curled, her hand slinking into Toni’s hair as she _tugged-_

Toni’s hand getting _rougher,_ palm slapping her clit with every **fucking** thrust, a growl rumbling in her chest-

And then Toni’s hand disappeared from inside her.

Cheryl’s brows furrowed into extreme annoyance, mouth opening to rip Toni a new one for stopping, only to then feel a strangled moan escape her vocal chords as fingers were replaced with a hot, _wet_ , mouth.

“Oh _god,_ Toni!”

Uncontrollably so, Cheryl flexed and relaxed her pale thighs around Toni’s head, ankles locking around the back of her neck and on the flat plane of her strong, rippling, back muscles.

Toni’s tongue lapped in and out, over and under, dragging every wayward sort of moan from Cheryl’s mouth.

Her eyes fluttered open to take in the tapestry above her bed, red’s and blue’s and black’s mixing together into one messy blemish, much like the paintings on her neck and all over her body now.

Cheryl rocked her body desperately into Toni.

_Any second now-_

Toni wrapped her lips around Cheryl’s clit and _sucked_ , tongue battering the little button in her mouth, Cheryl whimpering most demandingly now.

_“Please please please-”_

What a little begging puddle had Toni had reduced her to, what would her mother think of her now?

“Are you going to cum for me… like the good girl... you are, Cher?” Toni rasped from between her legs, licking between words.

Cheryl’s moans reached colossal pitch before her back snapped into an arch, legs shaking and trembling on either side of Toni’s head.

Wave after wave curdled in her stomach, thrashing against her pelvis, forcing her into euphoria, as she cried out her submission. Her walls clenched, hands fisting the sheets, her body basically hyperventilating with pleasure as Toni _just kept sucking._

“T-Toni, please I-I can’t-”

Cheryl begged and thrashed, but Toni held her thighs down on either side and tongue-fucked the redhead to another orgasm through her pleas.

Not that Cheryl was _really_ complaining.

Her stomach undulated in heavy breaths, chest heaving, as slowly, minute by minute, Cheryl’s consciousness came back to her.

By the time the cold calculative precision of her Blossom mind became less than foggy once more, Toni was propped up on one elbow, hanging loosely over Cheryl’s body and grinning down at the girl.

“Lost you there for a minute, Red,” she cockily lauded.

Cheryl rolled her eyes despite the little smirk gripping the corners of her mouth.

“At ease, TT, it’s just been a while since my last time.”

Toni screwed her face up into mock disappointment, cocking her head to the side.

“You mean to tell me I’m not good at what I do?”

Cheryl laughed richly, dragging her fingers through fluffy pink hair, matted gently at the nape of a tanned neck; there was no way she could deny the _prowess_ of her lover.

“Absolutely not. In fact,” Cheryl reached up, craning her neck, licking across Toni’s bottom lip seductively. “I think you fucked my legs senseless.”

Toni’s eyes darkened, and Cheryl gasped quietly as rough fingers pinched the inside of her thigh.

“But of course,” Cheryl shakily continued, ignoring the _lustily_ close palm at the apex of her thighs. “It’s my turn to do _you.”_

She moved to flip them over, only to be met with resistance from her girlfriend.

A strong body acted as a wall, Toni smiling softly and shaking her head.

“Not tonight, Cherry, tonight was about you.”

Cheryl pouted, a petulant whine building in her throat. This Blossom was not used to not getting what she wanted. And she _wanted_ Toni.

“But-”

“Ah ah,” Toni tutted, pushing Cheryl back down. “I mean it, Cheryl. I’m too tired tonight, but soon, I promise.”

“Promise?”

“Pinky,” Toni conceded, pressing a soft kiss to a sweaty forehead.

Cheryl hummed in contentment, flipping onto her stomach and drapping her hand over Toni’s stomach, face pressing into the misty tan neck.

Toni’s arm wrapped protectively around Cheryl’s shoulder, pulling her closer.

**_Safety._ **

Cheryl’s eyes prickled with tears.

She was so unfamiliar with that concept for so long, and yet here Toni was, wrapping her completely in ophidian essence.

And Cheryl felt _protected._

Despite the Topaz man currently locked and chained in her basement.

She had not forgotten about him, but he was a nuisance, simple a matter to deal with in the morning tomorrow.

Toni’s breath stuttered beneath Cheryl’s chin, and the redhead peeled away from her jaw momentarily, glancing up in curiosity.

Her eyes met gentle brown ones.

“Hi,” she giggled softly.

Cheryl’s heart grew tenfold.

“Hello, chérie.”

“I thought you would be asleep by now,” Toni admitted quietly, running dainty (but _talented)_ fingers up and down Cheryl’s back.

“Why? Do you have a secret rendezvous waiting to be whisked away somewhere?” Cheryl teased.

“Exactly,” Toni played along, smiling.

“You know,” Cheryl started again, a sudden idea popping into her mind uninvited. “There was a man apparently from a different part of the _country_ who was here to see you tonight.”

Toni quirked an amused eyebrow.

“I’m that in demand huh?”

Cheryl rolled her eyes, of _course_ Toni would take this moment to be ridiculously cocky.

“Be serious, Cha Cha. He didn’t even seem interested in seeing you though… like at least not in your lingerie,” Cheryl recalled with a diminutive feeling of wariness. “It almost seemed like he was there to assess you. He was so shocked when I called you my girlfriend, like he wasn’t expecting it.

Toni’s gaze grew a little more troubled.

“Really?”

Something flickered in brown eyes, it was gone so fast Cheryl wondered if she had imagined it.

“Yeah. But I’m sure it’s nothing, loonies like that come around the bordello all the time. The place is like a weirdo magnet,” Cheryl shrugged, covering up her obvious discomfort.

Thankfully, Toni took the bait.

“You’re a regular there,” she deadpanned, a twinkle of humor in her eyes. “Weirdo.”

It was astounding, how such a girl with a _such_ a damaged past, with abandonment issues and an abusive uncle, could be _so_ receptive and caring to Cheryl’s ever want and need.

To her tidal childish emotions embellished by a life of getting what she wanted under the safety of her renowned last name.

She had never felt such understanding from anyone.

Not even from her Jason.

“One day,” Cheryl started quietly, tracing mindless pattterns into Toni’s collarbone to distract herself from the painful weight of her next words. “One day, Toni, I’ll introduce you to JJ.”

Toni stiffened under her.

_Fuck._

Had she taken it too far?

 _What have you done_ **_now_ ** _, Cheryl?_

“I would be honored,” Toni quietly breathed, dispelling Cheryl’s fears. “God I… I would love that.”

Cheryl smiled wistfully into her girlfriend’s neck.

“Would you really?”

“Why _wouldn’t_ I be?” Toni asked, sounding almost offended. “He’s the closest thing you’ve ever had to a proper family. The one member you ever told me you cared about.”

“I cared about my Nana… Nana Rose,” Cheryl spoke softly, dragging up the painful memory of her late grandmother. “She saved me a lot of times even when my own parents threw me into the hellpits of despair.”

Toni remained quiet, doe eyes watching Cheryl with intrigue.

“When I was young, TT, I… truly honestly hated everyone. I mean _everyone_ , except for JJ and Nana, they were the only ones who didn’t tell me I needed to _be_ something for their love. Being JJ’s sister was enough for him to give me his unconditional love, and while Nana Rose didn’t exactly _adore_ me, she looked out for me. More than my own mother and father ever did.”

Toni reached up to cradle Cheryl’s face softly, still saying nothing, a noticeable look of despair on her beautiful face.

“But even with them… it was hard to believe most of the times that I was lovable.”

“Cheryl…”

“But you, Toni,” Cheryl smiled, taking the positive turn in her spiel. “ _You_ make me feel… like I can be.”

Toni _melted_.

Cheryl watched as the girl’s jaw locked, her head turning upwards defiantly, blinking away any rebellious tears that might decide to drip down the corner of her eyes.

_Let it out, Toni. Trust me._

It took several moments, labored breathing heavy in the room, until Toni smiled _that_ smile… the one that reminded Cheryl of that dangerous four lettered L-word.

“You are… my most precious _dream,_ Cheryl Blossom.”

_Most precious..._

**Dream.**

_You did it, Cheryl._

**_You are cared for._ **

 


	12. Fall Cotillion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! I've been gone for so incredibly long rip and this is a relatively short chapter but no worries because this IS a filler chapter and I'll have the next one posted within the week because I finally have some inspiration what with Riverdale coming back so soon :')

**i.**

At the age of thirteen, Cheryl learned a lot of things. She learned how to keep to herself, she learned that if her mother or father told her to do something, she should do it diligently and without question, and she also learned that the Blossom Fall Cotillion was one of the most important things the renowned family hosted.

A dance hosted at the beginning of autumn when the leaves were just starting to ripen into their reddish hues, accentuating the red family hair that they wore like an unblemished trademark, was the initiation of Cheryl and Jason Blossom into the family line of business.

Admittedly, Cheryl knew the Cotillion was more an initiation of Jason into the business and a place to parade Cheryl around like livestock for boys of other wealthy families to take a look at; but she was excited nonetheless. 

Not for the boys, never for the boys, but for a chance to make her parents proud, to put some respect on her name in front of the others. 

“It’s the most prestigious night of the  _ year,  _ Heather,” Cheryl gushed to her best friend, cuddled under the safety of her comforter, dark skin of her lover-to-be pressed against satin silk and ivory skin. “It’s really  _ really  _ important.” 

Heather smiled gently at her red haired fiend, the little Blossom rascal that had captured her heart in elementary school and hadn’t let go of it since. 

“What do you even  _ do  _ at a Cotillion, Cheryl? Dance all night with boys?” Heather asked, a hint of jealousy in her voice that Cheryl would’ve missed completely if she wasn’t always listening to her so closely.

Cheryl’s smile waned. 

“That’s not  _ all _ …” 

“Sounds to me like it is.”

“No really it’s not,” Cheryl shook her head, reaching for the warm palm of her best friends under the covers, only to find it slightly chillier than she remembered. “We also partake in the tasting of the first batch of Blossom Syrup that will be sold in stores at the end of this year before the Tree Tapping Ceremony renews it all for the next year.”

Heather raised a wary eyebrow, a watery smile on her lips. 

“Sounds boring.”

Cheryl giggled.

“It is a little.”

Silence draped them and like the midsummers night that every typical book talked about with sickly sweet kisses and first loves, Cheryl and Heather felt their own hearts swell with love. Except it wasn’t midsummer, it was a cold October night, and everything born then was due to die in a few months anyways.

Then, tentatively, like a hibernating animal peeking its head out of the ground for the first time in months, Heather squeaked a sentence- a  _ question.  _

“Could I come with you?” 

Cheryl’s breath faltered, crimson roughing the apples of her cheeks with a disquieting intensity, her heart thrumming mercilessly in its cage (also known as ribs).

She looked to her side, eyes meeting Heather’s, soft saccharine bliss floating back and forth behind uncertain sapphire eyes, and Cheryl has never felt a greater urge to kiss someone in her life. 

After a slow glimpse towards her heavy shut oak door, making sure that everything really was as still in the quiet October night as she recalled it being, she shifted onto her side, leaning in towards Heather.

Hazel eyes widened, fluttering down to Cheryl’s lips, as Heather took in a large gulp of air. 

“Cheryl, wait.”

Panic flashed across Cheryl’s face within seconds, her eyes flashing with distinguished  _ shame.  _

Heather's hand came up to rest peacefully over the redhead's sternum, but the damage was already done. 

Cheryl pulled away with a bulging sense of embarrassment and immense guilt. How did she kid herself that hard? No one was like  _ her,  _ guys might like guys but girls… no, her mother had warned her against that.

Yet here she was, making a  _ fool _ -

“Cheryl,  _ hey,”  _ Heather coaxed gently, reaching forth and lacing their finger together again.

Cheryl valiantly fought the shiver the ripped through her body at the action, but the way Heather's face softened directly after indicated otherwise.

“I’m sorry, Heather,” Cheryl quietly apologized, eyes looking anywhere but at the girl. “I didn’t mean-”

“Don’t apologize,” Heather shook her head, rubbing a soothing thumb over the back of Cheryl’s hand. “You weren’t doing anything I didn’t want you to do.

The ears on Cheryl’s heart perked up, tilting in the direction of Heather’s voice. 

“I didn’t?”

Heather chuckled softly and moved in closer, their thighs touching now.

“Of course not, silly. I just thought… I thought  _ you _ weren’t into me like that. Or maybe, I don’t know,” she sighed, exasperated, garnering Cheryl’s attention once more. “Maybe you weren’t ready for anything… for  _ us.”  _

And so, like water balloons filled with red paint, blush burst across Cheryl’s cheeks, her gaze lowering in dizzy affection rather than guilt, as Heather spoke those endearing words next to her.

“I… I’m ready, Heather. I am,” she spoke earnestly, quietly,  _ quickly,  _ she could not wait for Heather to know just  _ how  _ ready she was. “All I fear is the wrath of my mother. If she was to learn that her Blossom bait was ineligible to be sold to men on account of her sexuality…”

Heather gasped softly beside her and moved in even closer if it was possible. Cheryl was almost amazed that their bodies didn’t mold into one. 

“She wouldn’t…”

“But she would, my dear Heather,” Cheryl shook her head, looking straight into emblazoned brown eyes. “You have no idea… the  _ atrocities  _ she partakes in to keep the Blossom bloodline as pure as a Bible thumper would have it.”

Heather’s jaw hung open just slightly and Cheryl wistfully smiled back. 

“It’s such a joke, really. No devil woman like her would ever step foot through the gates of heaven and I doubt she’s ever seen the inside of a church in her life… but here we are.”

A lopsided look of disgruntlement crossed Heather’s face as she shook her head and ran an absent hand over the silk duvet. 

“I wish I could do something,” Heather spoke despondently, her eyes downcast and a subdued notion in her voice that made Cheryl felt like she was intruding on a private conversation. “You shouldn’t have to live like this, you know? Always scared of your mother, always hiding yourself.” 

“Shouldn’t I though?” Cheryl whispered. “I… I put her through so much embarrassment, and all because I can’t be like her. I’m not pristine and proper, I don’t bow to practically medieval sexist modems of running the family business… I’m not  _ straight.” _

Her own self loathing took her over like a tide, high rising and all consuming, crashing over her shoulders and sinking her into the depths below. Depths where the constant berating of her mother, the disappointed looks on her father’s face, the passive expression on Jason’s face as he watched Cheryl take beating after beating from the sidelines. Granted, Jason did come to check on her after and swore that he would never let it happen again. 

(Only to then stand quietly, making false promises in his mind, the next time it happened.) 

“So you would be okay if your mother did those things to me.”

It was a question in all its sentence structure, but to Cheryl, she realized it was a statement. Heather had come to the conclusion that if Cheryl was okay with being beat for liking girls… then she would be okay with Heather getting beat, too. 

_ “No,” _ Cheryl quietly admonished, a hand coming up to press against Heather’s cheek. “Absolutely not, Heather. God… just- no.” 

Even the thought of Penelope Blossom looking at Heather the wrong way made Cheryl’s veins curl with a rage she had never faced before. She would suffer for the rest of her life if she had to but she would not let a single hair on Heather’s beautiful head be shifted. 

“So how the  _ frick _ does that make it okay for her to do it to you then?” Heather countered, eyes wide and hand raised accusingly towards the oak door of Cheryl’s room. 

Cheryl smiled endearingly at the term  _ frick  _ used by her thirteen year old best friend trying her best not to fall prey to the predatory jaws of teenage waste words. A last strand of innocence left hanging from their shredded tapestries of youth, forever morphing into adults and being forced to mature past their years. 

But then it fell again, her heart clenching.

It  _ didn’t  _ make it okay, but it was what she had to deal with. 

There had just never been an alternative.

But maybe… maybe this was her out. If Cheryl took this chance and ran with it, brought Heather to the Fall Cotillion and showed her mother that she  _ wasn’t  _ scared to be who she was… 

Her hand slid over and laced their fingers together with a finality of reassurance that had Cheryl taking a deep breath. 

It rattled in her chest kind of like a broken dreidel rocking against walls, but she would be _okay._ “You can come,” she spoke softly, looking sideways at Heather out of the corner of her eye. “It would be my greatest pleasure to have you there, Heather.”

The grin that Heather sent her in that moment was life affirming and gave birth to new roses in her chest cavity, filling her heart with joy.

And while Heather leaned over and locked their lips together in the redhead’s first ever kiss, an action that had her melting at her fingertips and whimpering like a thirsted homeless man, Cheryl didn’t realize that she had just initiated the beginning of the end. 

The Fall Cotillion would come to be her worst nightmare. 

**ii.**

Toni stretched and stirred, her muscles groaning in protest to the delicious soreness embedded within her bones from last nights..  _ activities.  _

The reminder of it made her stomach churn again as she flipped onto her side and gazed serenely upon the sleeping figure of her girlfriend lying next to her.

She couldn’t see Cheryl’s face, the other girl turned away and on her stomach, one hand tucked palm down under her cheek pressed against the pillow. But Toni didn’t need to see her to know she looked  _ damn  _ beautiful in the morning, soft orange hair cascading down her ivory back like rivulets of water from Sweetwater River against the posh rocks.

Toni reached out and dragged a finger against the dip of Cheryl’s spine, accentuated by muscles on either side. 

She didn’t realize until the third trace that she was unconsciously drawing hearts into Cheryl’s back.

With a blush and a huff she turned away, snatching her hand to her chest like it was on fire. Toni Topaz was not accustomed to the feeling of  _ love,  _ much less this much of it, which was in that moment she simply wrote it off as a side effect of a drowsy morning post sex. 

She wasn’t sure why she had woken up this early in the morning, the time somewhere near five o’clock and six, based on the soft blue hue of dawn light pouring through under the curtains of Cheryl’s bedroom. 

For long years where John refused to keep clocks in their house to torture Toni with hours of toiling work, she had learned how to tell the time by assessing the height of the sun in the sky and the light. Granted, it was a little harder to do that on rainy days but she had taught herself nonetheless. 

_ John.  _

Toni’s eyes blinked faster and widened as she remembered she had her uncle living hostage beneath Cheryl’s house right now.

He was definitely awake by now, blinking away unconsciousness from Toni’s knuckle sandwich and pain from the bullet wound to his leg. 

Cheryl continued to softly snore beside Toni, almost inviting the girl back to sleep, but the pink haired Serpent had more important things to deal with. Like making sure her uncle was still alive, for various reasons.

So, with a quick peck to Cheryl’s temple, Toni threaded through the hallways, pulling a loose t-shirt and shorts which belonged to Cheryl, onto her body.

Her feet padded quietly over the soft imported rugs lining cherry wooden hallways throughout Cheryl’s mansion. It was something Toni was wildly unfamiliar with compared to the intense creaking and groaning of her trailer back at Sunnyside, alerting the entire neighborhood everytime she so much as breathed. 

She could get used to this. 

By the time she reached the oak door leading down to the basement, she had almost completely forgotten her anger. 

Only for it to bubble up in her throat again once she pushed past the entrance and into the horrid smelling damp basement. 

It reeked of alcoholic ointments and musty weeks old cigarette smoke lingering on ragged unwashed clothes. Not to mention also a distinct smell of mildew somewhere in there but that was the least of her worries now. 

At the far end of the room where the straw cot sagged under the weight of John’s body, Toni watched with a grimace as her uncle snored gently, a blossoming patch of brownish red gauze covering his bullet wound. 

He looked almost… at  _ peace. _

Her hands curled into fists at her side.

He didn’t  _ deserve  _ peace, he deserved every ounce of suffering that Cheryl and Toni could give him, to makeup for all the commotion he had created in both of their lives. 

Sure, Toni didn’t exactly know  _ what  _ he had done to Cheryl, but she knew it was bad.

“Wake the  _ fuck  _ up,” she growled, low in her chest, leg coming out to kick aggressively against one of the legs of the cot. 

It shook greatly and dangerously under her violence, and John jerked away, groaning almost immediately in pain before regarding Toni with dreary  _ tired  _ eyes. His face was twisted into a pained grimace, his eyes watery with tears as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down at the sight of his niece.

Strangely enough, the sight didn’t make Toni feel any better. 

In fact, it kind of made her feel worse. 

How was she any better than him if she was the cause of another’s suffering no matter  _ how  _ bad the person was? 

It made Toni queasy in her subconscious, everything in here was screaming a different moral compass. She wanted to beat him into the ground, to make him feel every ounce of pain that she ever did, for him to relive the moments of terror because he  _ deserved  _ it. 

But she couldn’t. 

Her hand’s clenched and unclenched beside her, the devil and the angel on her two shoulders arguing violently with each other over the sound of her own laborious breathing. 

“Ant, back for more? Back to see your old man suffer and struggle for his dying breath?” He taunted, his smile lopsided and sickening. 

He would always be the man of her nightmares. 

“You are  _ not  _ my  _ old man,”  _ Toni spat out through gritted teeth. 

John remained impassive, nothing but a sinister glimmer in his pained eyes.

Toni scrunched her shoulders up and all but ran out of the basement, her tears biting at her eyes, her hand clutched to her chest, top row of teeth set snuggly into her plump bottom lip. She had to get away from him, she  _ had  _ to, he would only corrupt her more. He would only make her possible of things that she never wanted to be possible of- 

_ Thud. _

Her body collided harshly with that of another, and it took her all but half a second to fall into the body with the grace of a woman disheartened. 

Cheryl’s arms wrapped concretely and safely around Toni, reminding the girl with a simple touch that she would be there no matter what. 

“Toni?  _ Hey,  _ Toni, it’s me, Cheryl, what’s going on?” the redhead cooed gently into her ear, rubbing up and down Toni’s back with each word, attempting to calm the practically uncontrollable girl in her arms. 

Toni just sobbed harder, her hand clutching the back of Cheryl’s shirt in fists, keeping the girl as close to her as she could.

“Were you down in the basement just now?” her girlfriend persisted.

Toni shoved her face as deep as it could go into Cheryl’s neck, willing away the tears that  _ wouldn’t stop coming.  _ She didn’t want to admit to her, she didn’t want to face the reality that any soft mention of her parents (John replacing her own father with himself, her  _ old man)  _ almost sent over her the edge. She didn’t want to admit that she would never be able to hurt him as he deserved.

So many years of being a Serpent and yet she still couldn’t stomach such violence for the hell of it. 

“I- I just wanted to go check on him, I just-” Toni stuttered incoherently, mumbling it into Cheryl’s neck, tears soaking into tan cheeks. 

“Okay, baby,  _ shh  _ it’s okay,” Cheryl threaded her hand through Toni’s hair, massaging the scalp gently.

Toni hiccuped into the soft porcelain skin, feeling her heart slow with every stroke of Cheryl’s long and most definitely talented fingers. It was no doubt that she found comfort in the redhead’s arms but the sheer level of equilibrium that she felt, away from the world, eyes closed and breathing in nothing but the fruity essence of her lover… it was unparalleled. 

Once her breathing had come back under control and only tear tracks remained, Cheryl pulled away, hand cupping the back of Toni’s neck, intent brown eyes staring into hers. 

“He didn’t  _ do  _ anything to you, right?” 

Toni shook her head, reaching down to wring her wrists. 

“Okay, so what happened?”

She could scoff at how dangerously close Cheryl sounded to being a shrink, but Toni knew this was for her good. The idea of therapists had been kind of ridiculous to her her whole life considering she dealt with all  _ her  _ trauma without anyone else helping. But Cheryl, she was different. She wasn’t someone being paid to sit there with her for two hours to pour her soul out to. 

She was doing it simply out of the kindness of her pure heart that bled red. 

“I went down there,” Toni retold slowly, her memory coming back from the head banging few moments of extra adrenaline pumping through her body. “I went down there to see how he was doing. I just wanted to  _ check up  _ on him, I mean we’ve literally got him tied in your basement with a bullet wound in his leg, y’know?” 

Cheryl’s eyes grew impossibly softer and her hand never ceased scratching gently at the back of Toni’s neck, calming and coaxing her into a telling of more. 

“But then… I saw him. And he looked so goddamn  _ peaceful,  _ and I thought of all the times he walked in on me sleeping, looking probably as peaceful as that… and then he beat me,” Toni’s voice wavered, her hands trembling at her sides.  
  
It was like if she closed her eyes she could almost  _ feel  _ the moment his hand would bare down on her back and jolt her awake from a light sleep. She could feel the tear pricking her eyes as if another mark was being made over the existing ones from the night before. Toni didn’t want to face her fears like this, like a coward, everything in her body was screaming against it. To hide and mask it, Cheryl should never have to see her like this. 

But when soft red lips pressed to her cheek, and the manicured nail of Cheryl's thumb scratched across the base of her neck, Toni knew she couldn’t. 

There was no hiding from any of this. 

“I wanted him to  _ wake up,  _ to see me above him and feel the fear that I did for eight fucking years of my life,” Toni seethed again, Cheryl’s encouraging working to multitudes now. “But then he opened his eyes, and I  _ couldn’t.  _ I felt like I was fourteen all over again, wishing I could do something but knowing I was powerless. I want to exact him for every night I went to sleep crying or I couldn’t fall asleep at all because of how badly my body was bruised, but I can’t. I don’t want to be him. I want to be  _ better  _ than him.”

Without missing a beat, Cheryl began to speak, her voice folding over Toni’s ears like melted butter, like  _ home.  _

“You are not him, Toni,” Cheryl assured, reaching over to tuck a lock of pink hair behind Toni’s ear. “You are… so much more than he could ever imagine to be. You want  _ revenge,  _ that is not the same as hurting someone because of your own hidden agenda. I support you in whatever decision you make…”

Cheryl’s hands came up to cup the back of Toni's hands. 

Uncertainty shined in Cheryl’s eyes before she opened her mouth and spoke the next words. 

“I’ll even let him go if that’s what you want.”

A gasp died in the back of Toni’s throat.

Who  _ was  _ this godsent woman?

Toni might not know exactly what beef Cheryl had with the man in the basement of her house, but she knew that it was a deep enough wound, a  _ bad  _ enough happenstance, that the redhead would give absolutely anything to see him suffer. She had seen the glint of sadistic joy in Cheryl’s eyes as they had hauled him into the basement, unconscious groans slipping from his mouth every time Fangs or Sweetpea moved in the wrong direction.

Yet she wasn’t  _ sinister,  _ she was nothing compared to John. 

But here she was, willing to give all that up, give her chance at peace in her own mind up, for  _ Toni.  _

Toni had been quiet for too long, she noticed the uncomfortable way Cheryl squirmed under the girl’s gaze. 

She reached up and traced a soft thumb against Cheryl’s ivory cheek. 

Cheryl smiled and leaned into the soft touch.

“I don’t want you to let him go,” Toni finally settled. “I just need you to be there with me… when we confront him again.” 

Blush melted into crimson creeping up a pale neck as Cheryl bashfully turned away, a not so secretive smile plastered across her face. 

“Of course, TT, whatever you’d like. I wouldn’t dream of going down there alone anyways.” 

“Yeah, I know,” Toni teased, an impish grin growing on her face. “Scaredy cat.” 

Cheryl scoffed and rolled her eyes playfully, moving away, in the direction of the kitchen, away from the heavy oak basement door. Toni’s eyes travelled to her generous backside, subconsciously biting down on her lower lip at the delectable sight, the same behind that she had  _ slapped-  _

“Cat got your tongue, Toni?” 

Her eyes snapped back up to Cheryl who was grinning devilishly at her. 

This damn woman. 

“Yeah… I think it does,” Toni retorted, the innuendo not lost on Cheryl as her mouth hung open slightly, eyes darkening. 

“You’re making it rather hard for me to not drag you right back to the bedroom, TT.” 

“What’s stopping you?” Toni asked, her smile dangling off the edge of her lips.

Cheryl quirked a curious eyebrow when a knock rained heavily down on her front door, attracting both of their attentions. Toni didn’t know there was anyone they had been expecting, and yet, Cheryl turned away from her girlfriend with an air of relief like she wasn’t fazed. 

“There’s someone coming…?” Toni asked, trailing slowly after Cheryl, feeling daunted in the awfully big mansion that she was slowly becoming situated in. 

“Of course, TT,” Cheryl spoke, like Toni had forgotten something. “The doctor? For you uncle?” 

Toni grimaced. 

“Right.”

They both sauntered carefully up to the door, Toni not missing the way Cheryl had to take several deep breaths before opening the door and plastering on a fake smile for the heavily brown haired man standing at the doorstep of their house.

_ Their  _ house _.  _ Toni winced. This was not her house, the girl might be hers, but  _ god  _ she needed to slow down. 

“Dr. Cossack, welcome,” Cheryl stepped aside, urging Toni to do the same as her back met the girl’s front, pushing her inside.

The doctor stepped in, a briefcase hanging from one hand, his lab coat heavy over his shoulders, but his posture so straight he made it seem like he was a man made of steel. His eyes were cold and calculating behind his spectacles, bushy brown beard bouncing a little as he licked over his lips.

Toni’s insides churned. 

She remembered a time when she had wanted to look like that, to be that. She had wanted to be a healer for so long, to be the person that saw a life near its end and then saved it. She wanted to be like the people who had patched her up after a Ghoulie fight or after Toni had to step between a bar fight and caught up in it instead. 

Funnily enough, never for when she truly needed it though.

She cowered in her own bed, waiting for her body to do it’s thing by healing slowly and perhaps a little disjointedly, after John’s fists came down over her skin and bones. 

“Miss Blossom, a bullet wound you said?” He asked, his voice crisp. He was heartless. 

There was no compassion in him, no wonder he was the Blossom doctor, he probably had to remain detached from the situation as to not get a target put over his head by Clifford Blossom for becoming too attached or inquisitive.

“Yes in the basement,” Cheryl answered, no shame or awkwardness in her voice. 

Like this wasn’t out of the ordinary. 

Dr. Cossack only showed some sense of amusement when his bushy eyebrow slowly raised in the corner, eyes darting back to Toni, giving her a quick once over. 

It was only then that she became uncomfortably aware of the fact that she was only dressed scantily in Cheryl’s shirt which hung down to her knees and her face was barren, devoid of any make up. She was practically bare in front of this man whom she had never met before, his only claim into her life being through business ties with her girlfriend. 

His eyes wandered away eventually, but not ashamedly so. This was very clearly a man who harbored no values, his moral compass weakened by whatever it was in his life that he did. 

Not saying anything more, Toni watched as he squared his already square shoulders and walked with purpose over to the basement door, clearly more than acquainted with all the whereabouts of the things in Cheryl’s mansion. 

When he was out of sight, finally, Toni turned to her girlfriend with a frown on her face, Cheryl already training her vision on pink hair and downturned lips. 

“Something wrong, sweetheart?”

“Dr. Cossack…? He looks like every serial killer ever,” Toni deadpanned, unsettled by the presence of the doctor in their-  _ Cheryl’s  _ house. 

Cheryl’s face falls a little, her eyes dropping to pale hands as she wrings her wrists together. 

“Yeah… he’s been the family doctor for about ten years now. The longest one, I guess you can attribute that to his serial killer-esque attitude,” Cheryl took a deep breath, filling her chest with beautiful  _ necessary  _ oxygen. “Every doctor we ever had before him, they got inquisitive very fast. My parents required the utmost discretion, and with doctors nosing around in their business whenever they came over to heal another victim of the Blossom empire, my parents got rid of them in the most effective way they knew how to.” 

A gasp died in the back of Toni’s throat. 

“They killed them,” Toni concluded obviously. 

Cheryl nodded.

“I  _ hated  _ it. I would come to care for most of them as they would realize that I didn’t deserve to be stuck in that situation…  One of them even tried save me. It was after…” Cheryl trailed off, ehr eyes squeezing tightly shut. “Well, it doesn’t matter. He’s who we have now, and while he is definitely my least favorite  _ person,  _ he knows what he’s doing. The coldest people make the best doctors sometimes.” 

Toni shifted her eyes to the side.

_ The coldest people make the best doctors sometimes.  _

Is that what she would’ve had to give up in order to pursuit her dreams?

Cheryl’s hand came up to caress her cheek, moving strands of pink that had come to stick against the slightly salty and sweaty skin. 

“Let’s go in there, shall we? I need to know what’s happening down there, and I need to explain things to him,” Cheryl softly offered, rubbing her thumb back and forth over the apple of Toni’s cheek. 

Toni nodded feebly, pressing herself into Cheryl’s body as the taller girl cupped the back of her neck and pressed a sweet kiss to her lips. 

It felt like home, even within this giant mansion that had more than she could ever possibly need. 

“Let’s go.” 

**iii.**

The basement seemed to have dropped another three degrees when Toni and Cheryl made their way inside, Toni trailing fraily beside Cheryl. 

The redhead seemed to have herself more put together, her back straight, shoulders pulled back in that manner that Toni had  _ never  _ seen directed in her way. Cheryl had never been anything but soft with her, even in the beginning when they first met at the strip club Cheryl had put her guard down. 

Toni’s hand gripped Cheryl’s hand more tightly at the thought, adoration coursing through her veins. 

Cheryl glanced tenderly to the side at the motion, smiling softly.

“Oh, look, we’ve got the whole gang with us, huh?” John growled, interrupting their moment and causing Cheryl and Toni to look down at the pathetic excuse of a man. 

“We’re just here to make sure you don’t do any funny business with one of the best doctors I have,” Cheryl explained, her voice cold, eyes shut from the world, so devoid from what they had been only seconds ago when she was looking at Toni.

_ “Funny business?”  _ John intoned after a beat, a humorless chuckle ringing out from him. “What do you think I could possibly get up to while you have me tied to a pole and your grope-y doctor over here is fingering my bullet wound?” 

Cheryl and Toni both inwardly grimaced at the crass wording. 

“Shove it, John,” Toni growled, her protectiveness shining again. 

He merely rolled his eyes. 

“You think you’re so high and mighty now that you’ve got a girlfriend on the topic of the economic pyramid, huh, Ant?” John jeered from where he lay, Dr. Cossack curiously eyeing the wound with a glimmer in his eyes that Toni knew wasn’t from the extra interesting  _ medical find. _

“She’s more to me than just money, John,” Toni grit her teeth, grinding them together almost painfully. “You would know that, if you knew how to love.” 

His eyes darkened. 

“I  _ know  _ how to love,  _ bitch,”  _ he spat, almost offended at the notion. “Or did you forgot  _ who  _ all this is for? For whom was it, Toni, that I tolerated you?” 

Her insides curdled, knees weakening.

_ Mother. My mother.  _

Toni looked away, she could no longer look at the man who would have very well single handedly destroyed her family. 

_ They did that themselves, Toni,  _ the devil on her shoulder advocated. 

When her eyes traveled back to John, he wasn’t looking at her anymore, just staring down at the doctor’s fingers working around his wound, a smile playing on his lips. Almost wistful, in its nature, the smile seemed to recall the kind of person he used to be, before his brother and sister-in-law,  _ lover,  _ disappeared. 

“That’s enough,” Cheryl interrupted their already ceased conversation, looking wearily from John to Toni but maintaining her stature. “Dr. Cossack would you be so kind as to sedate him on your way out?” 

The doctor’s clinical eyes scanned over John as he gingerly bandaged the banged up knee, nodding curtly in a manner that made Toni tick. He looked so  _ mechanical,  _ Toni had never in her life seen someone look so dead on the inside. 

Even her uncle had more emotion than he did, the Ghoulies she beat up on the daily held more contempt in their eyes than this man.

He looked like pure evil.

It chilled Toni to her core. 

“Of course, Miss Blossom,” He responded curtly, not wasting his breath on any other words, not that anyone expected him to. 

Cheryl twitched beside Toni but said nothing, only thankful that her ever faithful robot of a doctor wasn’t going to ask any questions, just like always. 

Before Toni knew it, her wrist was being encompassed in a soft palm and she was dragged away, out the oak doors which guarded her uncle from the world.

Or perhaps, the world from her uncle.

 

**Author's Note:**

> so that's that! I'll try to post chapters as frequently as possible so comment, leave kudos, constructive criticism, everything is appreciated :)


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